Crash Like Thunder
by thedorkygirl
Summary: A wedding and a child, order optional. For the JavaJunkie ficathon. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

**title**: Crash Like Thunder

**author**: keren ziv

**spoilers**: "A House Is Not a Home"

**summary**: A wedding and a child (order optional). Written for the Luke/Lorelai ficathon for maybedarkpink.

**chapter one**

_i._

Emily had begun sending letters in July. Lorelai figured that it was pretty inventive of her mother, but she still wouldn't read them. The first had been a surprise -- a letter from Emily Gilmore indicated an important notice. Her mother had sent them out on very few occasions to Lorelai: once when her mother's father died, another when a second cousin had married into the British Royal Family (a very distant Duke).

Lorelai had torn it open, fingers trembling in a way that made the thin stationary paper shiver with ripples. It had been handwritten in her mother's distinguished script, her address placed neatly, perfectly above the salutation.

"Lorelai -- " it had begun, and Lorelai had thrown it on the hall table. Her mother had started those notes prior with a simple but respectful greeting, never just using her name. For her mother, intimacy was not used with deaths and weddings. Curiosity had gotten the better of Lorelai then, but instead of picking up the letter, she had screamed Luke's name.

"What?" he'd called from the bathroom. "I'm painting in here, Lorelai."

"I realize that." Snatching the letter and envelope back up, Lorelai had crossed the distance from the front hall to the downstairs bath, a feat that took no more than two seconds. She paused just beyond the doorframe and angled her neck so that she could peek into the room. The shower curtain was missing, and the toilet was covered in clear plastic. "What if I have to go pee?"

"Use the upstairs bathroom," Luke said. "Lorelai, don't you think that you could have walked over here first, then begun a conversation with me?"

Two months later and she could have blamed the pregnancy and fear of fumes hurting the baby. However, she wasn't expecting yet (or even thinking of babies), and Lorelai had only shrugged in the doorway, "It smells funny in here. I don't want that in my hair."

Luke sighed. "What is it?"

"My mother wrote me. Will you read the letter?"

She knew that Luke loved her, but she also knew that there were times when she truly exasperated him. Lorelai suspected that this was a time as such. Luke carefully wiped his dripping brush on the edges of the paint can, then lay it smartly over the top.

"What do you mean, read the letter? You want me to read your mail to you?"

"Not _to_ me exactly," explained Lorelai in a helpful manner. "I would just like you to read it and then gimme the gist of the situation. Sort of like defcon levels. I don't want to know _why_ they're suddenly a different color, but I would like to know if they're orange or something."

"Is the letter addressed to me?"

"No. It's addressed to Mrs. Lorelai Danes."

She caught his eye. It had been just over a month, but she and Luke still shared the same giddy, secret smile whenever things like that occurred. There was something addictive in the pride of marriage that they could not stray from. Her eyes smiled more than her mouth when they shared these looks, and she would sometimes blush with a happiness that she hadn't tasted before.

Luke cleared his throat, his natural shyness interrupting the moment in a way that didn't feel like a disturbance. Lorelai felt nearly perfect then. Mrs. Lorelai Danes.

(And her mother would have said -- oh, Lorelai. Women get married every day. To which Lorelai would have replied, yes, but how many of them are me?)

"Do you see my problem here?" he asked. "I am not Mrs. Lorelai Danes."

She decided to ignore the problem with him being a missus when she was a perfectly good one standing before him in the doorway. There was only so must distraction that Luke would take from her.

"No, but you are _Mr._ Lorelai Danes. And as such a personage, it would behoove you to read your wife's mail and see if she's got to duct tape the windows or not."

"Gimme the letter," sigh Luke. Opening it up, he pursued it for several moments.

Lorelai tapped her foot five times in a row before raising her eyebrows and stepping into Luke's personal space. Eyes on him and not anywhere near the paper, she scanned his face briefly in inquisition.

"Well?"

"Blah blah blah, what's best for Rory, blah blah blah, you don't know what's good for the family ... oh, this is a good one. She's yelling at you for eloping. Says it throws a black mark on the family name."

"What does she say about you?" Lorelai was suddenly anxious. She dipped her head into the hollow of his neck and inhaled.

"Not anything bad," Luke said. She exhaled. "Just called me a good-for-nothing scoundrel for stealing you away. Oh, this is ripe." And he laughed a little bit before continuing. "She's angry about being invited to the reception but not the ceremony."

"I thought she just went through the eloping part of the letter," Lorelai said. Only Maisy and Buddy and Sookie and her family -- Jackson, Davy, and brand new Isabelle -- had been at the tiny little courthouse where she and Luke were married. "And she didn't even _come_ to the reception. Dad and Rory showed up like thieves in the night, unescorted by Mrs. Emily Gilmore."

"This is _your_ mother, Lorelai, not mine. Mine made more sense." He squinted. "And Emily has tiny handwriting! Ah, now she's berating you for 'successfully avoiding your only blood relatives in attendance all evening.'"

"In case you were too ill-bred to figure that out, it was a jab at you again."

"Caught that, thanks." Luke laced his words with the slightest hint of sarcasm. Lorelai wrinkled her nose and showed him the tip of her tongue between her lips. "Here, that's all that she's said. Why don't you read the letter yourself?"

Lorelai shoved the paper away as if it were a fruit cocktail.

"Me? Read the letter? No thank you! I will not maintain a relationship, even by post, with my mother."

"You play adamant very well, Lorelai, but I just read the letter to you."

"No, you recapped it. You were like Sars or Uncle Bob. I did not actually subject myself to the horror that is contact with Emily Gilmore. You did it for me. For that, I am grateful. You want I should kiss you?"

He dipped down for a kiss, and she marveled at how well their bodies matched together. It was if there were a Luke mold and a Lorelai mold that had both been made complementary to the other. They were fitted like pieces of a puzzle.

"Love you," she said.

"You too."

For Lorelai, hearing the mushy from Luke generally came with a complimentary feeling of triumph. She had gotten through to Luke Danes -- had not only made him love her but had somehow stolen the words from him. Was it that she would have never loved him if he had not loved her first? Questions like that seemed almost irrelevant. Hadn't Luke built her a chuppah for her marriage to another man when he had wasting away with his love for her?

Of course, Luke wasn't exactly a waster-away, and Lorelai hadn't really loved Max, so there was that pesty moot point thing popping right back up.

She looked around at the house with a proprietress's pride that she had not felt since her first year as a homeowner when she and Rory had moved into the house that was theirs for a decade. Then too she had seen how much work was needed to make the comforts of a real home apparent, but they had been hidden behind creaky stairs and broken window-latches.

Here, the stairs weren't creaky (though there was several holes in the floor, some newer than others), and the windows had already been attacked by a silicon-wielding Luke. One of the nicer things about being married to him was that she needn't flutter her eyelashes so much as she'd had to get things repaired.

Of course, there was the trade-off of sex for painted walls that Luke seemed quite fond of.

"When are you gonna finish this house all up and pretty?"

Her smile was there to tell Luke that she was joking -- inviting one of those sexy rants that she raved about (rants, she had learned, were a very successful form of foreplay). Luke took the bait with an eye roll and returning smile hidden behind stubble and a put-upon air.

"How long have we owned this house?"

"Hmm, let me see," Lorelai said teasingly. "Since a week before our marriage."

That inevitable moment of pride was there before Luke continued to build his rant. Marriage and homeownership! They were an accomplished couple.

"And when did we get married?"

"June second, baby!"

The image of her wedding in the tiny courthouse, standing so close to Luke that she felt any bediamondment other than the band that had been Luke's mothers would have ruined her, flashed momentarily before her eyes. The contents of her mother's letter replayed, and she wondered if it had been as terrible as Emily seemed to think. A tiny little elopement never hurt anybody -- but Emily was feeling the pain of a snub.

She shook the thought out of her head. It had been a wonderful day; having her mother there would have been too stressful, especially as she hadn't _wanted_ her there.

"Right," said Luke, drawing her back to the conversation at hand. "Now, what's today's date?"

"God, I wouldn't know the answer if I had a calendar to guide me."

"Today is July twelfth."

"The twelfth of July!" triumphed Lorelai. "That's the date. Two thousand five is the year."

"Now," said Luke, ignoring her addition to the conversation, "we've had this house for less than two months. I've repaired the holes in the living room floor --"

"Who knew that couch sex would lead to holes number two and three?" came Lorelai's rhetorical interjection. "I guess hole number three should have been a gimme. I mean, fool me once and all that."

"--and I'm almost finished painting the bathroom, after which I will remove this disgusting linoleum and tile it. I do this between the diner, sleeping, eating, showering --"

"--making passionate love to your really hot wife--"

"--and now, apparently, reading you your correspondence."

"I'm just that sexy in your flannel shirts, huh?"

"I'm thinking of buying checkered," Luke said dryly.

"God, no! Not the checkered shirt! What's next, a ten gallon hat and a full beard?"

She wondered for a moment on how Emily would have taken the conversation -- filled with wild ramblings and sexy banter. It was an inappropriate conversation if others were in the room, and Lorelai would have said it had there been a hundred guests standing round her and listening eagerly. Emily would have sighed and begged Lorelai to not be an exhibitionist for just one moment.

"Who ever heard of growing a beard in the middle of July?"

"Who ever heard of a man so desperate to desexify his wife that he would buy checkered shirts?" Lorelai asked. "I gotta tell ya, though, I look damn good in gingham."

"Desexify?"

"Removing of the sexy. Or removing of the clothes. I'll show you the second definition if you want. Got a powerpoint and everything."

"Not the in bathroom! I just painted in here."

"I was speaking of that place upstairs. You know. The one with its own bathroom, a fireplace, and, oh, yeah -- a bed."

Luke led the way.

_ii._

When Lorelai had been four, she and an older child had engineered to remove the training wheels on her small, pink bicycle by themselves (how they had done it remained a mystery even to the murky mud of Lorelai's own memories). Taking it poolside where they distinguished a slight incline that was not evident on any later viewings, she had climbed atop the bike and pedaled.

Instead of flying swiftly like a bird, as the older child had assured her she would do, Lorelai had gone head first into a table, fallen off of her bike onto her arm in such as way as to break it, and slipped into the pool, getting herself absolutely drenched.

The smashing into the table was rather fun, the arm didn't hurt yet, and, if Lorelai had landed outside of the wading area, she had learned to swim the summer before. However, the bicycle was in shambles and the helmet that her mother had purchased for her last week was dented from where she'd landed on it. She burst into tears and noticed that it was best not to move her left arm.

The older neighborhood child had by this time rushed home by way of the side gate. How many minutes Lorelai had sat in the pool crying was uncertain, but Richard, who had found her, swore that it couldn't have been more than five. He was just on his way to answer the ringing telephone (which turned out to be a call from the mother of the older child, warning the Gilmores that their daughter had possibly drowned, and could they please send her own daughter's bicycle up the street once they had the chance?) when he heard Lorelai's choked sobs.

A sopping Lorelai was pulled out of the pool by her father in swift fashion. He said nothing, just gathered her into his arms, and Lorelai screamed.

"What's the matter?" Richard had asked.

Less than five seconds after her father had unwittingly jarred her arm, her mother came rushing out of the house. "A coincidence," Emily would say when relating the story later. "I was looking for Richard, but I didn't hear Lorelai until she squealed."

The insult disguised in there -- squealing was done by barnyard animals and not by girls -- was hidden from perhaps Emily herself, but every time the story was related (and in almost the exact same words), Lorelai cringed. She had behaved like a brutish little heathen, not a young lady.

Richard had driven them to the hospital; Lorelai rode, for the first and last time in her life, on the lap of her mother. Her mother had rubbed circles on the small of Lorelai's back, and she'd sobbed long after the pain had veiled itself in stillness. She had felt slightly guilty for dripping over the interior of the car and ruining her new helmet, but she wasn't going to relinquish the feel of her mother's hair in her face until she had to.

She had felt safe.


	2. Chapter 2

**chapter two**

_iii._

Lorelai wondered if Luke went to an apothecary for the ingredients to be used in her morning's breakfast. He could be commissioning upon the syrupy stuffs and make right for the gooey love potion without her knowing it. It was the only way that she could see that would have her so happy to be awake at six forty-five, fully dressed and out of the house.

"It helps that I'm closer to the diner now," she told him over her blueberry and chocolate chip pancakes. "The walk isn't so long, and I can pop in here more often."

"Lorelai, if you were in here any more, I'd have to expand the apartment upstairs and charge you rent. And this includes the time before our marriage."

"Coffee, sir, for your impertinence!"

"I've got a customer," Luke said, but he grabbed the pot and filled her cup up to the brim before turning to Taylor.

It was a bagel-to-go for Mr. Doose, and the diner was deserted again.

"Why do you even open up this early in the morning?"

"For people like Taylor, who wake at a normal time to begin their workday. He provides a service to the town, and I provide a service to him. My turn just happens to come first."

Lorelai snorted in a distinctly unfeminine manner.

"Service. Dirty."

"Aw, geeze."

"Your turn first," she continued. "Dirtier."

"Rory called the diner last night," Luke said by way of introducing a less 'dirty' topic. "She was sorry that she missed you."

She knew why he hadn't told her earlier; he had arrived home when she was fast asleep, and the early morning hours had been spent in activities not suitable for one's daughter to be in attendance. He had been looking for a way into the topic (and had stumbled on it out of desperation to shut her up).

"What did she want?" Lorelai greedily stole in secondhand information about her daughter as way of making up for the fact that she could not gather it by primary source.

"She's going to the West Coast with Emily for a couple of weeks. Well -- she and Richard and Logan are going with Emily."

"My mother doesn't have a family, she has an entourage."

The conversation would have perhaps become more strained if it had been allowed to continue. However, luckily for Lorelai, a group of strangers arrived then and distracted Luke from making any comment to her last statement.

She finished her coffee, stabbed half-heartedly at her chilling pancakes, and decided to make for the Dragonfly. Pushing her plate away, Lorelai grabbed her jacket off of the back of her chair.

"I'll be back for lunch," she said as she passed Luke and the tourists.

Just as she reached the door, someone asked a question in a whisper that was probably not supposed to be that loud (though it _was_ a large and empty room, and so why shouldn't they expect to be heard?).

"Did you see her pay?"

"She's my wife," Luke said, and she heard him chuckle. If he had ever laughed in the low, sexy way before, she had never been there to hear it (at least, not outside of the bedroom). Was she the cause of such good?

Lorelai grinned as the door swung shut behind her.

_iv._

That afternoon, she waited upon her best friend.

"Lorelai!" Sookie cried. "I was just about to call you. Belle did the cutest thing today. When she spit up after lunch, she made little bubbles with her mouth. She seemed so surprised by them. I don't know if she can see them -- I mean, I don't think that _I_ could have seen them, and I'm an adult while she's just a baby -- but I think she could feel them there."

If there were one person in the world who could babble as much as Lorelai, it was Sookie. She dropped her jacket on the edge of the couch.

"What a clever little girl!" she exclaimed, zooming over to the pile of blankets where the baby lay. "And isn't she just looking so gorgeous today? You got dressed up nice for Aunt Lorelai, didn't you, sweetie?"

Belle said nothing, just stared with her blue eyes that were still deciding on which color they wanted to settle. Hazel, said Lorelai, and she would not be dissuaded, though Sookie was certain that her daughter would follow suit to her brother and have brown eyes.

"She's just up from her nap, so you came at a good time."

"Oh, I've impeccable timing, Sookie. Just ask Luke. The other day, I knew what the date was and everything. It was the perfect example."

"Oh good!" said Sookie. "With the baby, I've lost all track of time. What _is_ today?"

Lorelai threw her hands into the air with exasperation. Baby Belle watched solemnly from her place on the blankets. What a bewildering sight it must have been for the little one to see this wild woman dancing in her abode.

"Do I look like a digital watch maker or something? Why do people keep asking me these things?"

"A digital watch maker?"

"Duh," said Lorelai. "I would have to program the date. And maybe the time too."

"Where you get these things, I will never know."

Davy came bounding in then from the hallway (and, presumably, his bedroom). He was wearing very little in the way of clothes -- in fact, the one article of clothing in which he bedecked himself was not in the proper spot at all.

"Sookie, your son is wearing his underwear on his head."

Sookie sighed.

"He thinks that it turns him invisible when he wears it like that. He marches right into the kitchen and goes for the cupboard where I keep the sweets if I'm not careful."

"You don't have any creepy uncles that taught him that, did you?"

"Nope," Sookie said cheerfully. "This is just my son, the nudist."

Lorelai was on the brink of telling Sookie that she ought to really inform Davy that it was sunglasses, not underwear, that made one invisible when remembered how difficult Rory had been in her own way as a toddler -- her resisistence to wet grass being quite tame as compared to her desire to wear all white shirts, even when she managed to soil them quite easily, grass or no grass. She'd give a lot now to see Rory dressed in a white dress and smile.

"Let him run naked," she said. "It'll be something to think about when he starts dating. Just make sure to take lots of pictures."

"_So_ got you coverd there. We already have an entire roll." Sookie leaned over and picked up a photoalbulm. "Three pages, dedicated to Davy showing the world what he's made of. Jackson thinks it's hilarious," she added as Lorelai bent over the pictures. "I think he's just glad that somebody around here doesn't flinch when you go near his groin area."

"How is Jackson, by the way?"

"He told me that, as a Catholic, he feels that life is important, and he wants to get the procedure reversed."

"That dog," Lorelai declared. "I never seem him go to church on Easter. It's not like I'm there, but I know that he hunted eggs with me last year. Catholicism falls flat with his habits."

"Especially as his mother is Lutheran."

"Well, that's like Catholic-lite. Maybe he got confused."

"Yeah," Sookie agreed with a snort. "That's it. Davy! Slow down before you kill yourself or I have to do it for you!"

Beginining a circular route about them, Davy sped on past like a little demon. Once he learned to walk, the kid had lost no time in running. Thank God, she thought, I do not have to deal with this. She could leave the naked kids to Sookie and fawn over the little babies that lift their heads up all the way yet.

"Sookie, the is prettiest little girl that you have ever birthed. There is no improving with her. I mean, look at that _hair_."

"Isn't she just precious? I wonder how long she'll keep that hair before it all falls out and something brown grows in."

"Oh, no, I'm sure that won't happen."

"You said the exact same thing with Davy."

"Yes, well, Belle's a girl. We girls have a special way with hair."

"Davy's is an entirely different color altogether!"

"But it's red hair, Sookie! Red hair is like the Holy Grail."

Sookie scoffed at that with a flip of her own tresses.

"Oh, sure, the Holy Grail," she said. "Until you're in second grade, and somebody decides to call you 'Carrots.' And maybe Belle might take the scissors and chop off _all_ her hair. It gave -- it give -- it _would give_ the kids something more to laugh about."

Lorelai patted Sookie's arm.

"It's all in the past, Sook. Let it go."

"Carrots!" she said, throwing her hands up into the air. "I couldn't eat them for months."

_v._

That night, she spoke to Rory. Distances untraveled and numbers not dialed separated them, but Lorelai found that if she squinted into the bathroom mirror after having washed her face, she could just make out a ghost of an image that could have been her daughter.

"What are your plans?"

"They're rather nubilous."

"Okay, you're going to have to tell me what that word means, because I'm getting a vague Humbert Humbert reading off of you."

"Pervert."

That part of the conversation came more as a bit of self-mocking than for any real substance. She could not help but avoid what she really wanted to say, even if there were no one to listen to her. Lorelai recognized that humor provided a layer of comfort beneath which lay the hurt.

Juvenile. Lorelai grabbed the tube of toothpaste and tried again.

"Where are you going?"

"San Francisco. I've never been--" (but Lorelai knew that; why was Rory telling it to her?) "--and Grandma likes to watch -- and I quote -- 'the quaint little walk that the homosexuals do.'"

"My mother certainly is a people-watcher."

She spat into the sink and ran a cup of water to rinse. It just couldn't feel real enough.

"Why won't you call? Are you that stubborn?"

Lorelai wasn't certain as to whom she was really speaking.


	3. Chapter 3

**chapter three**

_vi._

August brought with it a thick and heavy heat. If there had been any break in the constant sun, Lorelai would have perhaps forgiven the temperature. However, it began dry, cloudless, and ruinous to her hair. There was to be no acceptance of this villainous character.

"Ouch!" she cried as she entered the diner, fanning herself with papers from the Dragonfly. "My flip-flop broke about halfway down the street, and I hop-skip-ran the rest of the way. I looked like Peg-Leg Joe in a three-legged race with an invisible partner."

"I take it the street was hot," Luke said as dryly as the air around them.

"That would be a yes." She shimmied up on a stool and handed him her shoe. "Fix it?"

"Off the counter! People eat here; they don't want your feet in their food."

"Uh, _hello_. This is not my foot. This is my shoe. Difference!"

While Lorelai was patently exasperated for no reason other than amusement, Luke crammed the toe-strap back into the hole whence it came. Giving an experimental pull to see if it would stay, he found that he had completed the task admirably. Luke handed it back to Lorelai.

"You're welcome."

"You're _good_," Lorelai said, eyeing her flip-flop. "If I didn't have you, I would have to buy another pair of flip-flops to replace these. You're all ... moneysaving." She leaned over and kissed him. "Okay, it's seven o'clock on a Thursday night. Can't Caesar lock up?"

Before -- he would have said no, that it was a big responsibility owning a business, and he was not about to foist off his responsibilities onto his workers. But that was changed, and it was of her doing. Oh, sure, he grumbled a little, but he was already taking off his apron and walking into the kitchen to talk to his cook as he did so. Before, he had walked her home, necked a little, maybe spent the night, but he would have returned to the diner, knowing that his bed was there if he needed it.

Now he went _home_. Not just with her -- for, more often than not, Lorelai came in for dinner only once or twice a week, and just as often she had to return to the Dragonfly Inn to take care of some last-minute paperwork that needed to be done. But Lorelai knew that there was something different in coming home with her and coming home to her.

She knew, of course, that part of it had to do with the house. It had taken several sleepless nights for her to realize that it was what she wanted. She had been afraid, at first, of changing her life too drastically: she had lost her daughter for the second time in a year; her parents and she were _not_ on speaking terms again, she was going to marry Luke in no less than a week's time, and she wanted to buy a _house_?

She'd realized then that the house was a big, tangible symbol of her new life. Her parents' house in Hartford had been her youth; the home that she had bought when Rory was eleven had been her daughter's youth. Now she wanted -- _needed_ -- this new house to make her own with Luke.

Moving into the old Twickham place had brought her closer to the town, also. Lorelai had never felt more a part of Stars Hollow than she did sitting on her front porch with Luke on a hot summer evening. It was almost perfect.

Tonight, it was a leisurely stroll home. They walked, of course, past the kiosk, and Lorelai paused so suddenly in front of it that Luke's steps stuttered, and he nearly tripped.

"Idea," she said, and she went browsing through the display with a determined air.

"Expecting someone?" Patty asked. Lorelai had in her hands two or three infant catalogues, and a magazine on motherhood was tucked under her arm.

To Lorelai, Luke looked alarmed. For half a moment, she considered toying with them both -- however, the absurdity of the situation meant that it could fall quickly out of her control, and pregnancy jokes were never as funny after living through one when you're sixteen.

"Oh, God, no," Lorelai said, brushing Miss Patty's insinuation off with a flick of her hand. "Luke and me? Kids? Right." She gave a grin. "I just want to see if I can find a baby catalogue for Sookie."

The expression on her husband's face fell carefully into something unreadable. Lorelai waved that away as quickly as she had Miss Patty.

"I'm sure she has enough catalogues, Lorelai," Luke said.

"Not for _her_, silly. I meant that I want to find one so I can go through it and order something for Belle. We got her clothes when she was born, but she's older now. In the three months she's been on this Earth, she's learned how to grab things! It's exciting, and she needs a crib mobile or something."

"Or something," Luke sighed, but he paused and let Lorelai go through the magazine rack. "You just want to see if the new _People _magazine is out yet."

"It's called a perk."

Behind her, Lorelai heard Luke sigh. She was too wrapped up in staring dreamily at the cover of a general infant catalogue. It was the Sears-Roebuck of the baby rags, and Lorelai was almost certain that she had found one of the greatest loves of her life.

"Boy, what a hunk," Lorelai said. Her husband made tsk noise in the back of his throat. She ignored him, turning to Patty. "When I was pregnant with Rory, all the baby magazines had women on them. Plus, my mother always seemed to buy the ones where the moms all wore sweater sets."

Miss Patty chuckled. "This is the twenty-first century, Lorelai."

"God, I want that picture. Gah. So pretty."

"If you think _he's_ nice, check out page twenty-seven."

"What is it?"

"It's every woman's dream," Miss Patty said with a confidential air.

"I'm buying it, Patty! I'm buying my porn. Now, Luke, turn around so that I don't feel dirty."

_vii._

Lorelai wore her Hot August Nights shirt as tribute to the sweat currently pooling in the arch of her lower back. She was drenched -- thankfully not in her own perspiration but in soapy water with which she had been washing her car.

Luke sat in the shade on the porch and watched her with no mild interest.

It was late in the morning on a Sunday -- the perfect day for such an exercise. Lorelai generally took her car in to be washed, but the dry heat had produced an inordinate amount of dust that settled in and frosted her car like powdered sugar atop a cake. The cost and gas it took to use the Hartford station had finally persuaded Lorelai that perhaps the vacuum cleaner sitting in the front closet would do just as well to get the scratchy dust out. Luke had suggested the wet sponge and a package of car wax.

"You are a dictator," she said midway down the car. He raised a brow at her, too languid in the heat to bother with an answer in a more verbal form of communication. She replied, "You dictated what I was to do -- that is, you told me to wash and wax the jeep -- and then you sat back and watched me. Dictator."

"Lorelai, do you want me to help you?"

"No, this is fun," she said. She grabbed the sponge and dipped it into the bucket, wringing it slightly. "It's just so hot."

That gave Lorelai an idea, and she cast a furtive glance over at Luke. He caught it and traded up to a stern look. It seemed to Lorelai as if Luke had a small warehouse of any number of varieties of stern looks. There were the ones used in the diner when her cell phone rang. There was also the look that he gave her as she chattered her way through a movie.

He had a stern look for her chattering through sex, too, but they both knew that the chance of Lorelai ending her career as a commentator was about as strong as that of her giving up her four cups before noon habit.

A smirk crossed her face.

"I really hope you're not thinking of anything obscene right now."

"No..." she said slowly. "It's just --" and she dipped her sponge back into the bucket "-- so hot." Instead of wringing the sponge over the water as she had done previously, Lorelai wrung it out above her head and neck. "Ah ... now that feels nice."

"Geeze, Lorelai, can't you stop that?" he asked, half-amused. "Taylor's already pretending to water his lawn so he can watch you."

She craned her neck in Taylor's direction and saw him standing with a hose in his hands, eyes cast in her direction. She waved, and Taylor managed to spray himself in the face with the hose when returning the gesture. It all reminded her very much of a comedy skit that she had once seen on a weekend television show.

"Maybe he's really watering his lawn," Lorelai said, wringing another sponge of water over her chest.

"He's got a rock garden."

That much was true, and she decided to ignore Taylor for the time being. Even thinking about him was putting a damper on her fun, and she did not want to have her neighbor and husband's arch-nemesis ruining her sex life.

"Come on, Luke!" she cried. "I'm spoofing _Cool Hand Luke_. That's gotta count for something. The name alone should get a smile out of you."

"Maybe you should be washing it in one of my shirts."

Lorelai chucked the sponge at him, and it landed squarely on his chest. She gave him a look that said, s_erves you right_, and turned back to the Jeep. Now without scrubbing implements, she grabbed the hose and squeezed the nozzle full blast. Water against the shining paint made a rainbow in the sun.

"It's too hot for flannel," she said. "And you never did buy anything checkered."

"You know," Luke said slowly, peering down at the damp spot on his chest, "I think that half the appeal in watching her was how hot the car was."

"Are you implying that my Jeep just doesn't get the same raise out of you?"

"Ah, geez," Luke groaned. "Lorelai!"

"I just dirtied myself without even knowing it!" exclaimed Lorelai. She made a face. "Okay, _icky_. Can we get back on erotic car fantasies for six hundred?"

"Right there with ya."

Lorelai smiled, and she put down her hose to walk up to him on the porch. Sitting next to him, she nestled her head into his shoulder.

"I love doing this."

"Doing what?" asked Luke, giving her a quizzical look.

"Sitting. Your arm around my waist. Lunch somewhere in the near future. It's nice."

Luke turned to her and kissed her brow, squeezing her just a little more tightly.

When she came out three hours later, she discovered that she had not turned off the water to the hose, nor had she taken the nozzle off. In the beating sun, the water had exploded its vessel, and she knew that their water bill was going to be atrocious.

_viii._

"Mom, hey, sit down," and Rory gestured with both hands to the empty chair next to her. "I didn't know you knew about this place. It just opened up."

"Sweetie, there's a reason _you _know about it," Lorelai said, dropping her bags onto the floor as she settled into the chair. "Three words: intravenous coffee hook-up. That's your mother. Now, to describe you, I would have to add the phrase 'in utero.'"

Actually, three days earlier, Luke had read to her a clipping that Emily had sent them about the opening of this place. Lorelai had wondered over and over again what it would be like if she bumped into her daughter as they were waiting in line for coffee.

"Lane told me that you talked," Rory said.

"Yeah -- I bumped into her last night as the band was crawling home from touring. She looked beat with a stick and hung out to dry."

"That's how she sounded on the phone this morning," agreed Rory. "I'm not entirely sure that she was awake yet."

Lorelai had indeed met Lane the night before, and the young woman's enthusiasm for what she termed 'life on the road' was unrivaled by anyone Lorelai had yet known. Even playing Seventh Day Adventist churches seemed not to have put a damper on the band's rock and roll attitude.

And, Lane had confided happily, she and her mother were on the best terms that they had ever been in their life.

"She told me that it was like having another best friend," Lorelai said. "She said --"

But Lorelai stepped up to the cash register and placed her order, shaking her head free of daydreams. It was no use to pretend that things were the same, no matter if Lane had said that her new relationship with her mother reminded her of the Lorelais'.


	4. Chapter 4

**chapter four**

_ix._

Perusing _People_ gave Lorelai a sense of calm. She knew that if things were going well in _People_, then, collectively, the world was going to have a good week. It didn't matter that the magazine was a weekly periodical reporting old news and not a magic newspaper that gave tomorrow's news today; she believed firmly in the mystical powers of _People_.

To call Luke skeptical was like calling Yale a nice school. Understatement was the term, and derision was Luke Danes's game.

"You're just jealous," Lorelai told him one evening as she simultaneously painted her toenails baby pink and devoured the pages of her glam mag. "_People_ and I, we got a connection. Nothing's ever going to change that, and you're scared."

"Of a magazine, Lorelai?"

"Yes!" she said. "And also of Taylor, but there's crazy little chance of me running off with him, so you're safe there."

"This house is too close to him!"

"Yadda yadda yadda," said Lorelai. "Topic, please? We were discussing your jealousy over a glossy little magazine that never hurt anybody in its life."

Luke threw up his hands in defeat. "At least there are no aliens!" he said.

"_Oh_, perfect transition into the article I'm reading," Lorelai said, thrusting the magazine into Luke's hands. "Can you imagine the spawn of Bennifer 2.0? Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck's baby will have the thinnest, longest nose ever, and there will be no breasts involved -- at all. Poor baby. It's going to look like a little alien."

Luke squinted down at the picture.

"It will not."

"Will too," affirmed Lorelai with an authoritive air. "Look at her. She never outgrew gawky as a teenager, and I'm not quite sure _when_ Affleck's supposed to hit puberty, but it's not for a few more years at least."

"Okay, maybe if I close one eye and squint the other, I can see a possible baby ET in their future." Luke shoved the magazine back into Lorelai's hands. "And don't tell anybody that I'm playing your games. The other guys will laugh at me."

He needn't have bothered. She was already lost in the magazine again.

"I wonder if they're Scientologists ..." Lorelai mused. "It could explain why they're so clearly not on their home world." Luke had had enough -- she could tell by the way his eyes rolled and the annoyed expression pasted over his face. She grinned. "You're trying to figure out if I'd take you for the house in a divorce, aren't you?"

"I'm actually more worried about the diner," he said. "You'd probably paint it pink with sparkles."

"But Luke -- what about the kids?" She had meant to say it teasingly, but the look that crossed Luke's face then was unfamiliar and strange. She watched him intently for the several seconds it took for him to compose himself and school his features into something resembling normalcy.

That was when she realized that she wasn't ready for another kid and that Luke suspected as much already. Possibly this was when she began to think that maybe _he_ was.

"Ah, geeze, Lorelai, don't give me another heart attack," he said. "You don't know how very ...weirded out I was to see you rummaging through the baby magazines the other day. I have a list called the Not Funny List, and that is at the top."

Lorelai needed a distraction from her own thoughts. It was ridiculous -- when had she ever sat down and thought about whether or not she was ready to have a baby with Luke? When had she even talked with him about the possibility? And now she was have a semi-freak because she thought maybe that they differed in their opinions?

She ran with Luke's comment instead of saying anything. It was easier.

"Do you really have a Not Funny List?" she asked with a flip of her hair. She grabbed the grocer's bag from off the table and held it, hand up and wrist bent backwards, on the tips of her fingers. "'Cause, like, that's _so_ cool. I mean, like, lists are handy and stuff. Y'know?"

"And we have a new number one."

There was a pillow thrown.

_x._

On a Wednesday late in the month, Lorelai had a day off from the Dragonfly. In the early afternoon she convinced Luke to leave the diner in Caesar's capable hands, order pizza in, and watch bad movies with her. She'd done the hair toss and the eye flutter thing, and later promised that she'd clean up after her mess. Luke also made her swear that she'd keep her intake of sugar down -- she ended up with a lot of popcorn, no coffee, and coca cola. Not even a milk dud passed her lips.

The first half-hour had been spent alternately affecting a pout on the restrictions and narrating _Life with Mikey_. By the time she'd put _All I Want for Christmas_ on, she'd gotten over her sulk and fallen silent, engrossed in the film. Thora Birch, she told Luke, was too cute to talk through.

After the movies, she picked up the half a dozen coke cans, shaking every second to see if there were any cola still left in there.

"Yum, flat coke," Lorelai said, taking a sip. "I love it like Bobby and Whitney love real coke."

"Your mother called today."

Lorelai looked up her duties of clearing away the table so swiftly that she wondered briefly if it were possible to give oneself whiplash by the very action of looking up.

"I didn't hear the phone."

And it was true; she'd been home all day doing her part for the house: sewing curtains for the upstairs rooms and trying to decide if there really was any difference in the paint samples that she'd been pouring over for a week.

"She called the diner."

"Where did she get that number?" she mused, more to herself than Luke.

"Rory," Luke said. Lorelai said nothing in reply. "She's sending a wedding gift, and she wanted to be certain that somebody would be home to accept it tomorrow."

"She sent one when we were married." Lorelai gestured in the direction of the kitchen. "The bread maker, remember?"

The insult behind that of course was not directed toward the cooking inept Lorelai but to Luke. As if he couldn't make his own breads from scratch -- and without the help of a machine (the oven? Luke had asked, and Lorelai had waved him off; that didn't count). It hadn't been used, but Luke had unpacked it and set it carefully up on the kitchen counter.

Lorelai thought that Luke was sometimes too polite for his own good (only sometimes, she would smile).

"This is another." Luke's voice was patient where Lorelai's was petulant.

"Two months later?"

"Lorelai, you should call her. She sounded --"

She interrupted him with a violent shake of a half-empty can of cola. A little splashed on her blouse, and she dabbed at herself with a napkin as she spoke.

"Emily sounded like she's using her superpowers of deception to win you over. You sound like it worked."

"Your mother sounded sad. She sounded very sad."

"My mother doesn't get sad, Luke," she said, doing her own version of gloomy forbearance. Lorelai tossed the sodden napkin aside. "She's never been sad. If she ever reaches close to the threshold of sad, she begins a charity project to get her mind off of it. By the time she's booked the hotel dinning room, she's quite calm and content. Writing the check, she's almost happy. Emily Gilmore's therapy is more expensive than if she'd gone to an actual psychiatrist."

The silence in the room was palpable. Lorelai felt that its very tangibility built not a bridge to cover distances between herself and Luke but a wall to sunder them apart. She was very near to tears after her tirade, though she wasn't certain why. Because she and Luke were fighting yet again over her family? Or was it because she and Luke were getting more passionate about the fights?

Or maybe it was because the very subject just wore her to the point of exhaustion; she sighed and reached for Luke. He pulled her into his arms, and they stayed like that for several minutes. She tried to concentrate solely on matching her breathing with his until there was nothing else on her mind. Soon, even that was lost as she listened to the thump of his heart in his chest.

"I'm sorry," Lorelai said.

"Me too. I know how your mom is." He pulled away from her and looked her in the eyes. "Lorelai, if you won't call your mother, you should at least call Rory. That's a relationship that I _know_ like I know you and me."

"Rory doesn't need me to call her. If she really wanted to talk to me, she could call me herself. I'm respecting her wishes, something that Emily Gilmore knows nothing about."

"You know, I'm pretty sure that's the exact same thing she said at the wedding reception," said Luke, smiling at her in a bitter mix of amusement and sorrow. "You two keep saying that if the other makes the first move, you'll talk. One of you has to make that move, Lorelai."

Lorelai stepped back.

"Can we not talk about this right now? I have to pick up Davy from Sookie's at four. He hasn't had a day out by himself since Belle came, and he's feeling sort of lonely. Jackson and I figured that some sugar and caffeine with Auntie Lorelai would cheer him right up."

"Lorelai --"

"Luke, honestly. We'll postpone it." Lorelai touched the side of his face, and his eyes caught hers. She smiled. "Last night, Davy peed on Belle. He's feeling a little neglected."

Luke softened. She knew that he would bring it back up, but she also knew that he understood her need to take it slowly. If he forced things, there very well could be another decade before she and her mother had a civil conversation. She put her hands in his and laced their fingers together.

"You can't just give the kid candy and coffee."

"Coffee? Never! He's at least three years too young," Lorelai admonished. "No, he's getting some cola. Only, I'm calling it root beer, because Sookie knows that root beer is caffeine free."

"You're a terrible aunt."

"Well, Uncle Luke, you could come with us and spend some quality time in the park," she offered. "I got him late enough that he's already exhausted -- I made Sookie move his naptime up a half hour, and you wouldn't believe how much that quiets kids up later in the evening."

"If they take it."

Lorelai opened her mouth and shut up with an audible snap.

"Crap. Cranky kid, aisle three."

They were in luck -- when they arrived at Sookie's house, she told them that he had indeed lain down for his nap and slept through it. Davy did seem to run around with a little lag, and Lorelai wasted no time in scooping the racer to her for a big hug.

"Auntie Lorelai!" exclaimed Davy. "Uncle Luke!"

He broke away from Lorelai and ran straight for Luke. He solemnly held out a hand, and Luke took it in his own and shook it.

"Hey, Dave," he said.

"Hey," replied the little boy, just as gruffly.

Sookie laughed delightedly, clapping her own two hands together.

"If that isn't the most adorable thing in the world, I don't know what is," she said, pulling out her camera. "Stay there for just a second -- " and before Luke was at all certain what was happening, Sookie had taken half a dozen pictures of him and Davy in a handshake.

"Aw, geeze," said Luke, dropping Davy's hand and fixing Lorelai with a beseeching look.

"Sookie!" chided Lorelai. "Luke is not _adorable_. Luke is manly. He's a manly man. He fixes houses and shakes hands. He drinks _beer_. Adorable men do not drink beer."

"Jackson's cousin Trey drinks beer," she pointed out. "And he's a man's _man_ if you catch my drift."

Jackson hurried in from the kitchen with a small bag in his hands. Lorelai suspected that it was filled with snakes for Davy -- she'd have to ditch those at her house before they went out to eat delightfully anti-nutritional things at Al's.

"It doesn't count if the beer is imported and has a fancy name," he said, handing the basket to Lorelai. He turned to Luke. "Hey! Didn't know you were here!" And Jackson pulled Luke into half a hug. "There's enough in there to feed you all, plus enough to last us through the next famine."

"Oh, Jackson," Sookie said, "there is not."

Jackson caught Lorelai's eye and mouthed that, yes, there certainly was. She grinned at him as she bent down to pick up Davy.

"Oomph," she said. "You're getting heavier. Next thing we know, you'll be driving a car."

The three of them managed to maneuver their way out of the house in record time, tasting only three or four dishes upon which Sookie was testing her culinary skills. Davy was strapped into his pram, secured as surely as if he were going to be skydiving, and the parachute opened somewhere from within his vehicle.

Luke wanted to eat at his diner, and if that didn't pass, he wanted them all to visit Snuffy's.

"But _Luke_," Lorelai said, "this is Italian week at Al's. He's got half a dozen pizzas to choose from and lasagna and spaghetti. Are you going to be denying Davy spaghetti?"

Luke was not to be dissuaded.

"Snuffy's got all that, plus hamburgers and french fries, and it's on a _kid's menu_. Al's doesn't have a kid's menu, and we'd have to portion it accordingly for Davy."

"Al's is right here, though. We can _walk_."

"They've got a coloring set that they hand out for little kids," Luke added. "And Snuffy's has good coffee."

Al's had terrible coffee.

"I'll drive."

Though it was a Thursday night, Snuffy's Tavern was packed. It was lucky that Luke knew the owners, because nothing other than VIP service would have gotten them a table. The hostess recognized them and led the three immediately to a booth. They were no sooner seated than Maisy came out and greeted them warmly.

"Luke!" she said. "And Lorelai -- gosh, you look beautiful tonight. You haven't looked more lovelysince your wedding day." Lorelai was used to such lavish compliments from the older woman, but it didn't mean that she couldn't accept them with a rose blush and smile between her husband and herself. "And do I recognize this young gentleman _from_ your wedding day?"

"I am exercising my rights as an aunt so that this new older brother can have a night out on the town."

"Admirable," Maisy said, pinching Davy's cheek's affectionately. "I'll be right back with the big bucket of crayons."

Davy ended up begging for scrambled eggs and pancakes, and Luke whispered that the eggs were scrambled with milk, and they were just as good at five-thirty as they were in the morning, so the kid may as well have them. He put his foot down when Lorelai whispered back that chocolate chips were good any time of the day.

"No," he said. "We do that for you because it's too late to save you. Davy's a kid, and we can control what he eats. No chocolate chips in his pancakes, or I'm vetoing the soda pop."

"You're a cruel man, Luke Danes."

Maisy returned then with the largest container of crayons that Lorelai had ever seen in her life. Rory had not been an exceptionally artistic child, and any Crayolas in the house invariable ended up worn to the stub by use of the mother and not the daughter.

"Boy, Maisy, you gonna let any other kid color today?" she joked.

"Oh, don't be silly," said the ever affable Maisy. "These are the old crayons. We keep them on hand to refill the boxes when they get low. I just thought that maybe he would like to have a lot of colors to choose from."

"C'mon, buddy," Luke said, "let's get this dinosaur colored in."

He reached for the green, but Davy interrupted him by grabbing on Luke's arm with both of his tiny fists.

"Pink!"

Luke managed to create the classic look of a curdled stomach at that pronouncement. Lorelai elbowed him in the stomach while Maisy fixed upon him a stern face. Lorelai could picture the words in his head: _aw, geeze_.

"Pink it is," sighed Luke, digging around for a crayon in the chosen color. "But let's keep purple out of the picture, okay?"

"Cassie is pink," stated Davy. "And she has wings."

Lorelai laughed, then snorted. She realized what Davy was talking about now -- Rory had gone through something similar with some puppet named Charlie Horse when she'd been around Davy's age.

"He's talking about a TV show," Lorelai explained. She turned to the little boy. "Davy, is Cassie pretty?"

"Pretty pink!" affirmed the boy.

"Oh, he has a crush!" said Luke with relief painted across his face. "I didn't want to make a big deal -- but, hey. Let's color in Cassie, okay, bud?"

Davy was more than willing to acquiesce on this point, and as he and Luke bent over the soon-to-be-colorful kid's menu, Lorelai gave Maisy their orders.

"The usual for me and Luke," she said, motioning down at the almost needless menus on the table. "And for Davy, he'd like scrambled eggs, pancakes, and a Pepsi."

"Got it," Maisy said, watching Luke and Davy out of the corner of her eye. Lowering her voice, she continued shortly, "He's real good with that boy, isn't he?"

Before Lorelai could respond, Maisy had nodded smartly and turned toward the kitchen where Buddy was waiting to make their orders. Soon as it was after she'd been thinking on the subject, Lorelai was quick to call to mind the subject of children.

She watched Luke with a sharp eye as he helped Davy with the coloring. For that he'd claimed to dislike hypothetical jam-handed kids, Luke unquestionably had never done wrong by any children that he'd known. With Rory, he had been the father-figure that she'd never had (and Lorelai felt a quick pang of disquiet rumble in her stomach). With Davy, he was sure and mild, never raising his voice, and always managing to keep control of the kid.

Even when he had been building the set for the school play -- Lorelai remembered the gossip that trickled in then of how the kids had gathered round Luke to tell him their stories and how Luke had listened patiently, all the while teaching them how to use tools and making little craftsmen and -women out of them.

She sighed, and Luke glanced up. Lorelai smiled and reached across the table for his hand, thinking, _he's paternal_. But if Luke was fatherly, was Lorelai really a mother-figure? She had raised her kid to be her best friend. She had definitely never expected at sixteen to be someone's mom, and she had never quite prepared herself for it. Certainly she was no mother like Emily Gilmore was a mother, had in fact gone out of her way to be just the opposite.

In the end, though, hadn't it all amounted to the same thing? The daughter ran away from home, and the mother was left to make do. So now what was Lorelai supposed to do? Have another baby, try another method, and hope that this time she didn't mess up?

What if she did?

Lorelai's dark reverie was interrupted by the arrival of their drinks.


	5. Chapter 5

**chapter five**

_xi._

September came mild and bright. Work on the house occupied much of their time; their paying jobs left them little free chance to truly get together and relax. The autumn guests were arriving at the inn in droves, and their business drove up sales around town, including Taylor's Shoppe and, of course, Luke's diner.

Lorelai was on the look-out for something special when she found a new lotion at some shop in Hartford that her mother would have died rather than be in. When Lorelai spotted it, she smiled slightly and picked it up to examine it more closely. Emily Gilmore would have been scandalized, and there was no way that she could have taken it up to the register to purchase it.

Sometimes Lorelai loved not being her mother.

Later that night, she dragged Luke into the bedroom. She was already dressed for the occasion, and Lorelai was certain that the flash of leg that Luke saw underneath her robe was more than enough persuasion for him to follow her.

"I have something for you," she said, sitting on the edge of the bed. Luke stood by her, arm around her shoulder. She shivered, and he held her tighter. "Mmm. I think you'll like it."

Lorelai picked up the opened bottle of lotion from the bed stand and shook it at Luke. He stayed standing, raising an eyebrow. Luke was nothing if not a skeptic, and it was part of the fun to entice him into her little games. For his part, she knew, he liked playing reluctant in her amusements.

"A lotion?" he asked.

Lorelai gave him patented eye roll number six hundred thirty-three. She'd practiced it all evening in the bathroom mirror while preparing herself in the bathroom with all of her womanly concoctions laid before her.

"Not just _any_ lotion. This is special."

"What's so special about this lotion? It doesn't burn, does it? Because you know that didn't work last time."

"Turn off the light and see."

She slipped off her robe and turned her back to him. When the room went dark, she heard a sharp gasp come from Luke. This was the prize for which she'd been working all night.

"You like it?" she asked, turning her head over her shoulder. "This may squick you out, but I had Sookie help me with the message. There was a problem involving a mirror and the fact that you can't read what's written in reverse. It was either go through a two-week course in mirror writing a la da Vinci or, you know, get help."

Luke had stayed motionless where he stood at the light switch. Lorelai smiled into her shoulder at the sight of his open mouth. He was so cute that she almost hated to ruin the moment -- almost. She was, after all, only human, and there were two people in the room, not one and a mannequin (though which was the doll, she wasn't certain).

"Luke?"

After a moment, he cleared his throat.

"It glows ... in the dark."

"You catch on quick," said Lorelai, arranging herself that she was facing him once more. "C'mere. You got anything that you wanna tell the folks back home?"

This was not when they conceived. They had accomplished that a week earlier.

_xii._

Early the next morning, she was awoken from a deep slumber by Luke, who looked a little less than pleased with her.

"You drew on me in that lotion!"

Lorelai wasn't quite awake yet. It was only seven in the morning by her purple alarm clock, which probably meant that it was actually a quarter hour earlier (or was it later?).

"What are you talking about?"

She managed to grope her way to a sitting position and peered at Luke from behind bleary eyes. Lorelai sucked in a great gulp of air through her nose and exhaled groggily. Was she awake yet, or was she merely dreaming that her husband had bounded in so early to yell a bit at her?

"I'm talking about the fact that Caesar calls me 'Sexyboy' now!" Luke said. _That_ caught Lorelai's attention, and something nagged at the back of her mind of an act which she had done the night before. What was it though? "Early morning deliveries mean no shower! Early morning deliveries mean no sun! No sun means glow-in-the-dark lotion _glows_ in the dark!"

_Oh._ Lorelai laughed, long and luxuriously.

"You're so sexy when you're irate."

"Lorelai!"

"I was drowsy," groused Lorelai not at all sullenly. "And you were there. You don't expect me to remember things like common sense when I'm about to fall asleep after a night of wild lovemaking, do you? 'Cause if you do, I gotta tell ya, you don't know the woman you married."

She sat up more fully in bed and grinned cheekily at him. He couldn't hold her eye for more than a few moments before he was matching her expression, albeit somewhat reluctantly. Luke shook his head in exasperation at her, and she blew him a raspberry.

"Sometimes, Lorelai," he said. "Just sometimes ..."

She reached up and pulled him down on the bed next to her.

"Mmm, I know. I kill you." Lorelai kissed the back of his neck. "How long did you say you were here?"

"Just a minute," he said warningly.

"Luke, Luke, Luke, _Luke_. We both know that we need a lot more than a minute. One does not rush these things."

He would have liked to argue, she knew, but there was no chance.

_xiii._

One late September evening, Lorelai came home to the most amazing smells that she had ever encountered emanating from her kitchen. Closing her eyes, she let the aroma take her into the room, inhaling great whiffs of the air as she walked.

"God, if this tastes half as good as I think it will, I might have to marry you all over again." Luke pressed his lips to her mouth, and she opened her eyes. "Hey, you."

"Hey, you're home early."

"Wanted to be with you."

Luke had taken a day off from the diner -- a habit which he had begun most recently, Lorelai reflected with amusement -- and had planned to spend most of it working on the house. Now, from the looks of things in here, it appeared that he'd finished early and taken to the kitchen. Her counter had several cakes on them, and there were quite a few more pans covered that looked as if they too could hold some delicious concoction.

"What's going on?"

"Jackson asked me to help out for Sookie's birthday, remember? I'm testing a couple of recipes."

"If there's a carrot cake in there, I would definitely nix it," Lorelai said. "Sookie has a thing about carrots. Childhood trauma. Long, confusing story. Wanna hear?"

"I'll pass," he answered, gathering two of the pans and moving them aside. "No carrots whatsoever?"

"Not unless you want her in tears, no. Sookie always thinks about the past on her birthdays. She says it makes her feel less old and more adult. And _don't_ ask me to tell you what that means; it's Sookie."

Luke grabbed another pan and placed it with the other two. He sighed heavily and looked at the four pans remaining. Lorelai followed his gaze and was caught by what looked to be a mixing bowl filled with chocolate frosting. She started edging her way over in hopes of getting a spoonful.

Bah. Maybe not. It smelled funny. Something else captured her attention though, and she zoomed over to it. It was what had led her to the kitchen in the first place if she remembered correctly, and it looked divine. She looked up at Luke and pointed down at the pan.

"What's this?"

"This," said Luke, "is bread pudding."

"God. Say that again."

Luke fixed her with a sincerely perplexed look, but he answered her nonetheless. She sure had him trained crazy well.

"...bread pudding?"

"Oh, Luke," said Lorelai. "Dr. Atkins hates you, but I adore you."

"You want some?"

And Luke seemed truly surprised by that, as if he had never envisioned Lorelai wanting something as simple as _pudding_ before in her life. She wondered if the dish were something that her mother would have burned had it set foot in her kitchen. To Lorelai, it sounded homey and comfortable -- and Emily Gilmore did neither home nor comfort.

"Do I like to dance naked to the Eminem Show? Of course I want some!"

With a bewildered eagerness, Luke dished out a generous helping of the bread pudding onto her plate. Lorelai made her way to the large breakfast table in the corner of the room by the window with the plate in one hand and a fork in the other. She sat and got a large forkful of bread pudding.

Luke watched as she put it in her mouth, almost as if he were afraid that she'd spit it out. He shouldn't have worried though -- Lorelai loved the first spicy taste of the still-warm bread and sauces. She dig in with greater alacrity, taking a piece that looked different in color and texture than that first. This one was more crisp; yet it was a soggy crispness that gave rather than forced a pleasantly tart taste in her mouth.

Lorelai got another bite.

Seeming to want to take advantage of her temporary silence, Luke breached a subject that was unlikely to come up by Lorelai's own volition. He cleared his throat and caught her eye.

"Rory called me."

Lorelai stopped mid chew, momentarily thrown. Forcing herself to resume eating, she swallowed the rest of mouthful and reached around for a napkin to dab her mouth with. Brief attempts at respite from the subject.

"That diner phone is getting popular."

"She used my cell," Luke said, moving away and beginning to clean up the kitchen. "She called my cell just after you'd left for work."

"Rory always was one to embrace technology."

Luke cleared his throat again There was obviously something more that he wanted to tell Lorelai, and it wasn't for his own behalf that he was turned wary but for that of another. Whatever Rory had said had been something that Luke didn't think she'd like.

"Forget it Luke," she said. "If she really wanted me to know for honest reasons, she'd call when she knows I'm home."

"Or you could always call her."

"This is delicious," Lorelai said. "What did you put in it? Vanilla pudding? I know that I don't taste banana, but I'm not sure what I taste. These, for example --" and she stabbed a piece of the tarty stuff up "-- I'm not sure what these are."

"Those are apples. The tiny brown thing you're eating is a raisin, and the spice you taste is the cinnamon. You gonna stop eating now that you know what's in it?"

"_Fruit_?" asked Lorelai. "I've been enjoying _fruit_? God, I knew you were good in bed, but I never knew that you were so amazing in the kitchen. I love bread pudding."

She peered down at the apple on the end of her fork for a moment -- and then ate it.

_xiv._

"I went skinny dipping today," Rory said.

It was late in the afternoon, the sky bright and cloudless, and, unless Rory were several time zones to the East, today had been living on sunshine all throughout. Lorelai felt heavy in the bosom, and definitely not in the sexy way.

"Really?"

"Yeah." A pause then. "It was early in the morning. We were all exhausted, and we suddenly found ourselves driving by this really inviting apartment complex."

Oh, Rory.

"Really?"

"Yes!" and Rory laughed. "Four AM with moonlight barely there, we swam stark naked in the private pool of a hundred random strangers."

"What then?" Lorelai asked. To her own ears there was dread lining her voice; to Rory's, she was sure, there was only interest laced in there. In her own way, she had become too good at faking approval and applying apathy.

"It started to thunder, and the first flash of lightning had me streaking to the car, clothes in my hands."

"Logan must have found that --" and Lorelai searched for a word that wasn't crude, that wasn't full of blame and disappointment "-- hilarious."

"So did Colin and Finn."

"Did it rain?" she asked, biting into a celery stick full of peanut butter. The crunch and chew resounding in her ears were not nearly loud enough to drown out the way that her heart was thudding so loudly in her breast.

"No, not a drop."

At least, that was what she heard through Luke, and that was what she thought that afternoon she and Rory would have talked about. Though it was the end of all she truly knew, she had a strange desire to continue the conversation. She needed to know so many more things, even through her own castles in the sky (it was a very leaky castle lately and quite low hung).

She couldn't find a voice.

(Things not said: did you peek at anyone? was it cold? Lorelai wanted to know. Also -- what about school? is it the same? are you still in that club? Mostly though -- are you ever coming home?)


	6. Chapter 6

**chapter six**

_xv._

The first time that she had cried in Luke's presence had been on her daughter's thirteenth birthday. Now there was a day that she wasn't proud of -- neither for Christopher's behavior nor for herself in hoping that he'd actually do what he'd promised his daughter.

They'd been planning it for weeks: Christopher would drive up from where ever in the hell it was that he was staying at that week and pick up Rory; they'd go to Hartford for dinner and be back by nine-thirty, an extra half hour after Rory's regular bed time.

And of course Christopher called from an airport terminal in Atlanta, Georgia, saying that his flight would be delayed and that he'd have to be back in the morning anyway to work, so he'd just see her the next time he came to Stars Hollow.

"And I'll FedEx her the gift."

Only Christopher wouldn't make the trip out for almost a year, and even then it would be with a car full of people whom neither Lorelai or Rory knew, and he couldn't stay long. But on the day of Rory's birthday, all Lorelai could see was that _today_ he was not there, and that it was this day that he had promised.

Luke had noticed her drawn face as she entered the diner. As he poured her cup of coffee, he asked her, "You okay?"

"Just about as okay as my kid is going to be when I pick her up this afternoon."

"Oh, hey," he said. "You mean Chris isn't going to show up?"

Rory had been talking excitedly about her father taking her to Hartford for weeks before her birthday. Lorelai was certain that Luke knew the itinerary better than Christopher by now -- more than Christopher had probably ever known it.

"No," and Lorelai'd looked darkly down into her cup of coffee. "I just can't believe that I let myself believe his promises and his lies again. You'd think I'd learn the first time that he let me down -- or even the first time he let Rory down. But of course I don't."

Luke had awkwardly arranged the sugar canisters as she spoke. She'd known that he was giving her an ear to confide in and trying not to have the appearance of interest to anyone around them. She wasn't certain how she knew; she simply understood it.

"And of course," she'd continued, "it has to be her birthday. He can't break any other date with my daughter -- no, he has to promise her a birthday, and then he takes it away." She sniffled a bit and felt immensely more stupid for having done so. "I mean, she just wanted to _be_ with him."

There was no one else in the diner, and so Luke came to her and took her hand.

"C'mere," he said gruffly, pulling her along and grabbing a handful of napkins as they passed a dispenser. Getting her around the counter, he brought her to the bottom of the stairs and set her down. "We can talk here until it's time for you to get Rory."

That was when Lorelai'd smiled up at him through already watery eyes and begun to bawl in earnest. She'd met the kind, considerate piece of Luke alongside the shy and awkward bits of him that afternoon. He'd been the nicest thing ever, she thought, for taking her away from any prying eyes; he'd been young and cute when he'd squirmed as she'd buried her head into his should and cried.

It took only five minutes, and when she was finished, no other customers had even entered the diner. Lorelai gave Luke an embarrassed, grateful look and asked for some water to dip her napkins in so that she could wash her face. After these ministrations, she looked just as composed as she had when she'd come into the diner.

"Thank you," Lorelai'd said. "You don't know what that means to me."

"Any time."

Before, Luke had been the diner man to tease and torment; he had been a willing and distant ear for Rory's chattering; he had provided her with coffee. That day, something in their relationship changed, and Lorelai went from knowing him as _Luke's diner guy_ and as _Luke_.

Of course, thinking back on it, Lorelai likes to wonder if the first small bit of love was created for her that day -- if not the full, blooming love that she shared with him now, at least the respect and appreciation of a friend. Time tempers thoughts and true feelings; she could no sooner tell you how she'd felt than she could tell you how she breathed.

_xvi._

It was the apple that did her in.

This was the second time that she'd sat on the edge of the bathtub and cried because of what a little bit of pee on a stick could tell her. This was the second time alone. It was a stupid little plastic stick that both ruined and blessed her life the first time; the second time it was even smaller. Lorelai felt insignificant.

"Oh, God," she whispered.

Though Lorelai knew that it was impossible, she couldn't help but feel that if she had not enjoyed the bread pudding so much, she would have not started eating apples again out of habit. If she had not begun once more with the apples, she almost believed that she wouldn't be standing here today pregnant.

Lorelai should always check the apple for poison.

She touched her stomach with the tip of her fingers, thinking about how it would harden and swell until it was large enough to carry several pounds of little person there inside of her. She imagined where she'd be in eight or nine months time -- it would be in late May, and Lorelai would be thinking achingly of bathing suits that she'd never wear and shorts for the hot days already upon her.

Lorelai would go through spring, the busiest time for the rich parents and their young children on break, unable to work at her best. Even by Christmas she would show, and the pictures would reflect the four month belly just beginning to stick out of her shirts.

Her breasts had swollen and gotten tender with Rory; so much so that by the end of the pregnancy she had wished that she hadn't had any breasts, the very first time since she'd learned of the pregnancy that she'd thought that.

Lorelai tossed the three sticks into the trash can, then carefully washed her hands. As she began on her face, she thought, _this is what Luke wants_. She had known this for some time; Luke wanted a baby, but he was willing to wait. She turned the faucet to cold and plashed water on her face. Would it be so wrong to do something that would make Luke happy?

And unbidden images showed themselves then of possibilities: a little girl with the bluest eyes that a father could give and tiny brown curls; a little boy with a skinned knee, doing an appropriate hop-of-pain (Lorelai recognized it as one of her own). Both, in her thoughts, stayed away from the grass.

Lorelai thought about how happy she was with Sookie's children. Davy and Belle were the world's brightest and cutest babies born since a Bush had taken office. She loved playing with them, spoiling them, and taking them aside to whisper silly secrets to. Having her own child would be like that a little.

A very little. She sighed, thinking, _it's not like I can change it now_. Lorelai had to buck up, take it all (the good and the bad). A kid would never be unwelcome to her, only unexpected.

Luke wanted a child. Lorelai was having one. It was only natural that she square her shoulders and put a smile on her face.

_xvii._

She wasted no time in going to the diner and grabbing Luke.

"We need to talk," she said.

Luke was standing, pad out and pencil ready, in front of Kirk and Lulu, both of whom were pursuing the menu as if they did not order the same exact thing every single time. For once, Lorelai was more impatient than Luke in this process, and she snapped at Kirk to hurry up and order, for God's sake.

"Double cheeseburger with no cheese, a coke, and fries," sulked Kirk, and Lulu ordered the same cheerfully.

Luke had barely given Caesar the order ("Ah! Kirk and Lulu are here!") when Lorelai tore up the stairs with him, her hand clutching his so tightly that, by the time they entered the old apartment, his knuckles hurt.

The apartment looked much the same, though quite a bit had changed. There was no bed in here anymore, and all the appliances save the stove and refrigerator had been transplanted to the new house. However, the essential bachelor feel of the place remained, as did the chairs upon which they both sat.

Now that she had him here, Lorelai wasn't sure how to begin.

"Girls are so lucky," she said, putting to words the first thing that came to her mind. "When they jump, they have boobs to keep the joy alive."

"What?"

"I'm just saying, I like it when my breasts bounce."

"Lorelai," said Luke, "I have no idea what you're talking about. Now, you've taken me upstairs by saying it's important; maybe you could tell me what I'm here for."

Lorelai generally was one to soak a band-aide in a hot bath and slowly easing it off with a generous amount of soap and the speed of a three-toed sloth. It was easier than taking an edge and pulling -- less painful and less irritating. There would be no red welt under any bandage she removed.

"I'm having a baby."

Today she was in the mood for yanking.

Lorelai watched Luke's face, wondering, _did I misread him?_ Did Luke want a child as much as she had thought all those weeks ago, or had it merely been a flight of fancy for Lorelai to assume that they'd been on two different wavelengths concerning the matter?

It turned out that it was only shock that kept him quiet.

"A baby," said Luke, the edges of his mouth twitching upward into what would soon be a smile. Lorelai smiled as well as she reached over and traced the path his lips were taking. "A baby?"

"A baby," she replied. "A baby, a baby, a baby. Luke Danes, you and I are going to have a baby!"

Luke picked her up then, and she was spun around and around until she was too dizzy to breath. He was laughing -- Luke Danes was laughing a thick, excited laugh that filled the entire room and made Lorelai feel as if she'd done something more wonderful than get knocked up. He put her down on the floor again, and she swayed to have two feet firmly planted.

He steadied her.

"Okay," he asked, his two hands cupping her face.

"Yeah."

They kissed, and the feel of her body pressed into his was something that Lorelai relished all the more because, she was aware, it would soon be disappearing. She laced her fingers through Luke's hair and kissed him more intensely, putting all the fierce good-byes that she had into it. _Good-bye, Banana Republic. _

They broke apart, both gasping a little bit for air.

"So," she said, smoothing her clothes, "I've disposed of the three tests, I've told you, and I've washed my hands. In a different order, of course. I think we should discuss some things about the pregnancy."

Saying the last two words made her feel a queer sort of happiness, and Lorelai let herself fall into the feeling until she was certain it was an abyss. There was no halfway -- it was all or nothing.

"Okay."

"Right. Um --" and Lorelai searched for the words to express herself. "I don't want to tell my family yet. I don't want anybody to know yet."

"Lorelai, everybody's going to know. You took a home pregnancy test. You took _three_. Our trash man might miss one -- maybe -- but never three."

"No! No one will! I did a marvelous thing. I used a room at the inn. The guests had already left, and the trash hadn't been emptied yet. I was like that chick on Alias. Super spy. The trash man is just going to think that one of our guests is knocked up!"

Lorelai didn't well with the clever and witty sayings -- knocked up came to mind -- when she was under this sort of pressure. She gave herself a deprecating smirk, and bowed her head to hide it from Luke.

"Okay. We'll keep it quiet."

Lorelai wanted to explain her reasons in the most honest way possible. She lifted her head and ran her fingers through her hair, thinking about how much easier it was when her parents had gotten referrals to fat farms than it was going to be having a town help her through her pregnancy.

"This is ... this is _ours_, our secret, and I want to keep it that way. I want it to stay special. When it's between us, nothing can ruin it, you know?

Luke took her hand.

"I'm so happy."

"I know," she said. "Trust me, I know."

_xviii._

Not long after, Lorelai came home one evening to find Luke at the breakfast table with the baby magazine that she'd brought so that she could find something for Sookie. She hadn't yet gone through it, though it was almost two months later.

Next to the magazine lay several pages of white paper, some with scrawling and numbers on them, others still blank.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

Luke looked embarrassed.

"I'm sketching a crib."

"Why?" The word was more exhaled than said; Lorelai bent low over his work and looked with amazement at what Luke had produced. On the page he was working on, there were three or four different cribs.

"I thought I'd make one," he said, and Lorelai fell in love again like a feather coming from the sky. For her he was soft and gentle as he never was with any other. This was her husband and the father of her child. "And a cradle. Babies like cradles when they're little. Jess did."

"Oh, Luke," and she reached for his hand. "I love you so much."

He turned to her and kissed her temple briefly. "I love you too."

Lorelai decided that now was not the best time to tell him that she was going to be picking the color for the crib (white was _so_ last year). In fact, she thought, she would probably let Luke build all the things he wanted for the baby's room, but she would definitely be decorating it -- and none of that silly green-is-the-new-pink bull that Sherry had spouted the year before.

It occurred to her that she was looking forward to sewing bedcovers and curtains for the baby's room, and Lorelai realized that within only a week or so, she had begun to think of it as a _baby_, not just in the abstract but as their child.

She was still terrified that she would screw up, but she was more anxious to meet this new person in her.

"Life rocks," said Lorelai. "I've got everything I've ever needed here with me right now."

"You need your family."

For a moment, Lorelai almost got upset -- but she couldn't really manage to make the effort, and so she settled on a somber but gentle explanation of her hurts to her husband.

"I have you, Luke," she said, because that was all she felt she had to say. "I have you, and I have this new one." She gestured at her midsection. "_We_ are a family. My mother and father and Rory are playing at it. They don't understand how to love someone like we love. What we have is special."

"You know Rory loves you, Lorelai." She knew, but she didn't answer. "And you know that Emily and Richard do too. You _know_ that like you know you love them."

"It's a different sort. It's a broken sort."

"If it's broken," Luke said, "it's because you're missing."

Lorelai sighed, not sure if she agreed or disagreed.

_xix._

"I helped Grandma plan her winter greenhouse today."

Paint chip samples lay scattered across the kitchen table. Lorelai shuffled them experimentally as she spoke, looking for colors that would go well together to paint the walls and borders of the room that she had Luke had decided was to be the babies. It was one of the three upstairs bedrooms (discounting the master), and it shared a bath and walk-in closet with another room. The third and final room too was connected to a bathroom, though that bath was also accessible from the hall.

There was a window seat overlooking the back yard where she imagined a small child curled up with a book on a rainy afternoon.

"Use some Nu-skin on your paper cuts," Lorelai said, shoving aside some verdant chips rather viciously. Underneath them was a paper with a note to herself on it: her first doctor's appointment was scheduled for the next week, but Lorelai realized with a start that she would have to call and cancel. There was a convention that week at the Dragonfly.

"In the garden, she wore a toque."

Lorelai laughed, images filling her head. Her mother had rarely gardened personally when she'd been a child -- she preferred instead to plan it out and let someone else execute her strategies -- but when she had deemed to enter the garden, she'd worn enough cloth for a beekeeper.

"Lemme guess. Blue with white flowers?

"Yeah," and her daughter sounded two parts amused and one part curious. "How did you know?"

"Oh, Rory, how well I remember that toque."

She wondered then if maybe she ought to stop talking to Rory like this; it probably wasn't healthy for her, and she had a better, less insane alternative in the form of speaking to her unborn child. But she couldn't stop -- for one, it felt like abandoning Rory to just ignore her for a new kid; for another, Lorelai had come to depend on these one-sided dialogues to keep her commonsensical.

"I'll just talk to you both," she whispered to herself.


	7. Chapter 7

**chapter seven**

_xx._

October brought almost daily letters from Emily. Lorelai continued to ignore them, and Luke still read them and even replied to a few. Soon there were letters between Luke and Emily that he did not read to Lorelai, and it was by the greatest self-restrained that Lorelai didn't peek into the envelopes.

There were no cats killed in the Danes household, a fact of which Lorelai was very proud.

"What is it today?" she asked as Luke tore open an envelope from her mother.

"There's a newspaper clipping."

"That's strange," she said, but it wasn't unheard of, so she thought not much of it. "Another new coffee shop in Hartford? Or what is it this time, a place where you can buy salt and pepper shakers in bulk?"

"No..." said Luke slowly. "It's Rory. And Logan."

"Oh, God," and Lorelai sighed deeply before putting her head onto her arms. "Please don't tell me that she's gone and been caught stealing another boat."

Lorelai lifted her head to prepare herself for the news, reckoning that it was better to take it standing up, so to speak.

"She's getting married."

The only thing that Lorelai could hear after that was on loop: _take it nicely, take it nicely, take it nicely, or she'll hate you forever_. She forced herself back to the present and saw that she was shaking. She steadied herself, picked up her coffee, and prepared to speak.

"When?"

Lorelai sipped her coffee deliberately.

"Um," and Luke checked the envelope and pulled out a heavy piece of parchment. A wedding invitation. Lorelai and he shared a glance. Opening it up, he read aloud, "Sunday, November sixth, two thousand five."

"That's only a few weeks away!"

She mentally reviewed the timetable in her head. It was already the ninth of October, which meant that in a little over three weeks' time, Lorelai was going to become a mother-in-law. She was too young to be a mother-in-law! She put her head back onto her arms.

"It says in the clipping that they're moving to Italy at the turn of the year so that 'Mr. Huntzberger can continue his education abroad.'" Luke's voice changed into a mocking, high-class accent. He stopped, suddenly stricken. "Lorelai, they're moving to Italy."

What was she supposed to say? Did Luke want her to ask something like, _what about _Rory's_ education?_

"That's a really long drive." Then -- "I wonder how the Huntzbergers are taking this. They didn't exactly welcome Rory with open arms into their family. I can only imagine what they're saying about her to her face -- and how much worse it is behind her back."

She could not think about her daughter moving across an ocean to get away from her; it was too much for her right now. Luke squeezed her shoulder gently, and she leaned her head back into him, wondering why things had turned out as they had done.

"This was published by Mr. and Mrs. Mitchum Huntzberger."

"Of course," she said. "She's ensorcelled them. Rory's good at that stuff."

"Lorelai?" and Lorelai could tell by Luke's voice that he was trying to change the subject slightly; he'd learned that lightening the situation helped Lorelai face those things which she might not have wanted to thought about otherwise. It was a trick learned at her knees.

"Mmm."

"Does Logan really have sisters named Honor and Patience?"

"Give me that!" Lorelai scanned the article, pleased for the distraction that kept her still tied into the conversation. "I can't believe it. In all truthfulness, I cannot believe it. When Rory mentioned Honor, I thought it was some sort of Scandinavian name. You know, like Anna, only spelled ridiculously and said like a snooty pants. Never did I think the name was _Honor_."

"You would have figured Patience out, though, right?"

"Probably," she said. "I hope."

_xxi._

Luke and Lorelai didn't talk about Rory's wedding again, though Lorelai knew that he'd called Rory and spoken with her about it more than once. As for herself, she had fallen back on the tried and true method of communication with her daughter -- as she was removing her make-up in the evening.

"What the hell is this?"

In her dreams, Lorelai grabbed on to Rory's hand and peered intently down onto the third finger. Her daughter snatched the hand away with a most exaggerated eye roll and place it back in her lap.

"You know, Mom," she said, "it's easy to see why I thought you were so quick."

"Is this a ring?"

She didn't know why she was asking these obvious, obnoxious questions -- perhaps it was to get it out of the way before she had the actual face to face meeting with her daughter (the meeting that she was beginning to think that she would never have). Lorelai wrinkled her nose down at the ring on Rory's finger and crossed her eyes.

It was still huge.

"Yes," Rory said, "it's a ring."

"Oh, Rory." Lorelai paused here to censor herself. "Are you _sure_ that's what you really want?"

"Mom!"

Even when Rory wasn't there, Lorelai managed to piss her off.

_xxii_.

Lorelai hadn't expected to run into Logan in Hartford -- Rory, yes, and possibly one of her parents. She'd given very little thought to Logan whatsoever, even considering the pending nuptials between him and her daughter. When she was tapped on the shoulder outside of a bookstore, she didn't think anything of it.

She turned and saw him.

"Oh," said Lorelai.

"Mrs. Danes," he said, and it was obviously that he hadn't known exactly how to address her. She was his soon-to-be mother-in-law, yet they had spent less than three hours in each other's company. He had taken the liberty of calling her Lorelai before, but times were changed.

She was not cruel.

"Lorelai, please," and she stuck out a hand to be shaken. "I'm ... surprised to see you."

She peered around his shoulder at the crowd surrounding them. He understood her actions, for he said, "Rory's not here. She's fitting the bridesmaids for their dresses. Well, my mother's dressmaker is fitting the bridesmaids. Rory's there to make sure they don't end up with modest replicas of Princess Diana's wedding gown."

Lorelai had the feeling that Logan was not exaggerating. If there were one mother-of-the-groom who would be desirous of the bridesmaids outshining the bride, it would be Mrs. Huntzberger, who did not think that Rory was good enough for her son.

She wondered how things that change; for all that she had told Luke that Rory'd bewitched and charmed them, Lorelai suspected that it was merely a ceasefire on the part of each person. The truce had probably been engineered by Rory though, and Lorelai took comfort in _that_.

"Can't wait to see them," she said, the closest she was coming to personally accepting the wedding invitation.

Logan understood that, and Lorelai felt herself disliking him less and wondering at where this sudden maturity had come from: he was holding himself differently ,and the smirk that had seemed so ready to grace his features was less of a smirk than an amused smile.

Logan was more adult.

"The wedding's only two week's away, and not all of the dresses are perfect. Rory's had hers handmade by Emily's woman," Logan said by way of conversation. "I know that you sew, so I thought maybe you'd like to know."

Lorelai smiled.

"I care less than Emily wants me to," she said. There was a silence then, but before it could get uncomfortable, she filled it -- with perhaps a topic even more awkward. "So. Italy."

"Yeah. I'm going to study international business and English."

"You couldn't study English in America?" But the way she said it was kind; she wasn't blaming him. Lorelai didn't want to be the wicked step-mother or even the wicked mother-in-law in this story. She was too tired of being miserable and mulish to keep up appearances anymore.

Logan threw his arms out and shrugged.

"I'd be hard-pressed to find a native speaker."

"They're treating her okay?" Lorelai asked, changing the subject sharply.

"I had to threaten to write a series of articles on the _real_ Huntzberger family, but my mother and grandfather are tame enough. My father is ... as distant to Rory as he is to me, so there are no favorites being played, in case you were worried."

"I just -- that dinner --" she started.

"There have been a lot of dinners since."

Lorelai stared at him, wondering where her daughter had met him and how she had found herself in love with him. He was nothing at all like the sort of men that she had dated; he was too good-looking, had too much money, and was infinitely sure of himself. Even Jason had had strange phobias and baggage brought with him in the relationship, and he certainly wasn't pretty.

Logan was everything that Richard and Emily had wanted for Lorelai, and everything which she thought she had taught Rory to avoid.

But the kid had done okay, even so.

"Thank you. Thank you for watching out for her." Lorelai looked down. "I've gotta --" and she waved vaguely in the direction for which she'd been headed before he'd stopped her.

"Yeah, me too. It was nice seeing you, Lorelai."

She watched him walk in the opposite direction, and only when he had turned the corner did she say, "Nice seeing you too."

_xxiii._

One afternoon during a lunch break that she'd stopped by the house to pick something up, Lorelai stumbled once more across the baby magazine that's she'd bought to look for a gift for Sookie. Luke had left it out on the table after he'd put away his drawings and sketches the night before, and Lorelai sat down to scan through it out of mild curiosity.

Most of the cover came off with a rip as Lorelai tore the hunky dad off of the page, indiscriminately shredding baby carrier and baby alike in her quest. She flipped the book open and started going through the pages in a quick scan.

Baby strollers were on page eleven, so she checked page ten to see if there was anything on it that she liked. Nothing was there but disgustingly ugly cribs, and goodness knows that she didn't need _them_. Lorelai started to rip the page but thought better of it. Standing, she went to a kitchen drawer that Luke had stocked with glue, rolls of tape, and other important, homey things that she would have never bothered to put in one spot.

"Bless him," she whispered. In another week, he'd have to wander through the house in order to restock the drawer.

Careful to get the order number and price, she cut two strollers out of the page. One looked as if it were ready for world war three -- there were attachments that she was certain her purse didn't have -- but the other was ... sturdy. It looked right. She tossed the first to her right, where she already had the hunky dad from the cover, and the second to her left.

"Mom, what are you doing? I keep hearing scissors. Are you clipping coupons? You know how you always forget to use them, and you'll end up with three or four dozen of them lining the bottom of your purse."

"I'm practicing sortilege."

"Well, then, Sybil, can you anticipate my next remark?"

"Yes, and you're grounded for it, missy! Show some respect for the arts."

Page fourteen held on it several absolutely adorable baby carriers. Her favorite was the one modeled by a man -- a father. The infant was on his chest, dark hair just visible over the back of the carrier. It was just what she wanted, and she didn't the reverse side before taking her scissors to it.

"Really -- what're you doing?"

"I'm making flashcards of things that Emily is likely to say while you're out shopping, and appropriate responses. The first one is _What do you think of my hat?_ Never, ever tell her the truth, especially if that happens to involve the fact that she looks like Davy Crockett. What you're supposed to do is use words like fetching and handsome."

"Quite fetching, rather handsome, got it."

Maybe. Maybe not. Having girl-talk with Rory was harder when she lied to her (especially as it was one-sided imaginings).

The house was quiet when she got to page twenty-seven. Patti had been right: eye candy littered that page in the form of same sex fathers.

"Oh my God." Lorelai giggled in the silence. "You filthy woman."


	8. Chapter 8

**chapter eight**

_xxiv._

By the beginning of November, Lorelai was starting to come to terms with the fact that her daughter was getting married. It was less than five days away; Luke had been in for a new suit, and Lorelai had sewn herself a dress out of a dark blue material.

On the evening of the fourth, while she lay in bed watching her husband undress, the topic was brought up in a more material sense than dresses and evening suits.

"I had lunch with Rory today," Luke said as he peeled off his socks. "It was some overpriced place in Hartford. We ate outside, and people walking by kept commenting on our food. I wanted to strangle them and string them up beside our table as a warning to the others."

"With Rory?"

"Yeah. And --" Luke stopped speaking, turning to look at Lorelai. She smiled for his sake, trying to feel okay with him eating lunch with Rory without her there. All she felt was strange. "Rory asked me something. She asked if I would ... walk her down the aisle."

Lorelai held her breath for the shortest of moments, thinking proudly on how that would look, her daughter and her husband walking together down the middle of a church filled with hundreds of guests. She had never thought that the day would come when Rory would need giving away -- had perhaps even assumed that her father or even herself would step in if Christopher weren't to do it.

Rory's choice of Luke was perfect.

"I'm so ... " and Lorelai searched for the best word. "I just can't tell you how this makes me feel. How happy and proud. It's wonderful. You said yes?" Luke nodded. She smiled, and then asked as delicately as possible. "Is Chris ..."

"Chris is, um, out of the country for the wedding, and she said that she'd rather me than her grandfather."

There were no words for Lorelai's emotions at that moment; it was beyond the happiness that she'd felt just moments prior. Rory had gone out of her way to include Luke in the wedding. Not only was it a beautiful gesture on Rory's part, but it had to be some sort of sign as to how Lorelai and her daughter's relationship was going.

"Well, if you're in the wedding party," she started sagely, "I suppose that I have to wear something pretty. Don't want to embarrass you."

Luke threw a sock at her.

_xxv._

The thunder woke her, but Rory was standing by the window, drawing the curtains aside so that they could watch the lightning together. Luke was already gone; if there had been no rain, the morning would have shown light through the window already.

"I knew it was going to rain today because I dreamt it."

"You dreamed that it was going to rain?" Lorelai asked in all dutifulness. They encouraged one another's stories by repeating the last line or word as a sort of verbal nudge. Go ahead, it said. Tell me more.

"Luckily, it came as a warning and not foresight. That would have been creepy."

"Foresight?"

"Would you have preferred premonition, Glinda?"

Lightning filled a cloud just outside the window, and they both jumped.

"I'm a magic mama." Her hand touched her stomach then, and even in her dreams she could not tell Rory of her pregnancy.

_xxvi._

It began like the beat of a heart. Lorelai didn't notice it because it had come and gone so evenly and so softly that she was certain it was nothing. Rhythm and pulse is not wrong; it is life and not death. But the pain had started, and she stopped in the middle of the kitchen, hurriedly putting down the glass of ice water that she'd poured herself.

"Ow," she said, and she cradled her stomach with both hands, swathing it in a sort of desperate plea.

Like a flood had come, the pain spread from one point and covered like a blanket, like numberless capillaries, the rest of her abdomen. It wasn't real, but it was, and she held on to her pain, arms crossed across her midsection, fingers clenched on the soft flesh of her hips.

The phone in her hand felt cool like bathroom tiles after a long night out. She hit speed dial, and Luke answered on the first ring.

"Hello?"

"Luke?" Tears that she hadn't even known she'd cried covered the word, and Lorelai inhaled softly. "Luke, come home."

"What's wrong?"

"Just --" and another wave hit, this time more intense. "I need you to drive me to the hospital."

Oh, God, please.

"I'll be right there."

Lorelai was still sitting in the kitchen when Luke came running into the house, calling her name. The pain had subsided by then, far less than it had been for those horrible few minutes, and she was with a half-drunk glass of water in her left hand.

The right had blood on her fingertips.

"I read somewhere," she began, "that you're supposed to save the tissue. But I don't want to do it. I want -- can we just go to the hospital?"

_xxvii._

In the waiting area, Lorelai sat in a wheelchair and flipped through a five-month-old Vogue while Luke checked her out. Her eyes were on the page, but she couldn't see anything. The only thing upon which she was able to fix was Luke's voice and that of the nurse at reception murmuring instructions.

There was no walk to the car; someone from the hospital wheeled her out. She couldn't protest like she wanted to -- she couldn't find it in her to tell them, "I'm okay. I'm okay." Lorelai hoped it was in her eyes as Luke helped her into the car.

After he belted her, she touched his shoulder. The contact spread a fire through her fingers, one not unlike earlier. She withdrew her hand and clothed herself in numbness again.

"I'm so sorry, Luke." A whisper had found its way out of her fractured being.

"No, no," he said. "No, why are you sorry? I'm sorry, Lorelai. I'm sorry."

"This is my fault. It's my body that messed up, and it hurts, Luke. It hurts so bad in so many different ways." Lorelai turned to him. "Maybe I didn't want it enough. Maybe it knew that I wasn't planning for it. Maybe this is God's way of saying, well, Lorelai, think before you act!"

"Nobody plans the first kid, Lorelai! Nobody ever thinks they're ready until they have to be!"

"I was thinking about it," she said softly. "With Davy. I saw how good you were with him, and I thought, Luke wants kids. Luke wants to be a dad. But I was so worried that I would mess up, just like I had with Rory. I was worried that I would go through twenty years and then lose her. I didn't think I could take the chance yet."

"You didn't lose Rory," said Luke. "You wouldn't have messed up with this kid."

Lorelai took a deep breath; she knew that she had to tell Luke this, even if he couldn't understand her, even if it made him angry. She didn't want to, but she had to tell him.

"I was scared when I found out I was pregnant. Terrified."

Luke grabbed her, held her. He clutched her so tightly in his arms that she could see stars at the edge of her vision. She felt his tears hot on her cheek, and wondered why she hadn't joined him in crying. She couldn't though; there were too many dark reasons for this for her to allow herself that weakness.

"I was scared too," he whispered fiercely. "Everybody gets scared, Lorelai."

It was like he was taking part of the blame off of her shoulders. She felt undeserving.

"And then -- I wanted it like I've never wanted anything else in this world," Lorelai told him. "But maybe I didn't want it enough."

"This is not your fault. This is no one's fault."

She felt her own tears begin to mingle with his.


	9. Chapter 9

**author's note**: Thank you to _everybody_ who has reviewed -- you guys are AWESOME. We have one more chapter after this, and then I'm finished. :-) Woo!  
**  
chapter nine**

_xxviii._

Luke wanted her to stay home from the wedding; barring that, he wanted Sookie, who had been unable to attend, to join them. Lorelai was against any change of their original plans.

"I'm fine, Luke," she told him, hand on his arm early Sunday. "I've rested. It's been three days. There's not much more that I can do. And we can't make Sookie come -- she's supposed to attend her cousin's shower. I wouldn't want to take her away."

"Sookie would want to be here for you."

"No, Sookie would want to take half a bakery with us to the wedding, and then she would commandeer the kitchen," Lorelai said. "I'm fine with out her -- _you're _fine without her."

Luke adjusted his tie once more in the mirror and grimaced at himself, both because of the outfit and because of Lorelai's attitude.

"I'm worried about you."

"I know -- but you shouldn't. If I can't get on by myself today and act as happy as possible, I will never _be_ happy, Luke." Lorelai stopped his fidgeting with one hand and fixed his tie with the other. "I need to pretend to laugh, because it's the only way I can laugh without thinking."

Lorelai questioned if she would ever get there again; it seemed unlikely that she would find a place in herself where laughter could slip easily from her lips. However, she knew that for today at least she must try -- if not for Luke, then most certainly for her daughter.

How very noble and altruistic her bull sounded, she thought.

_xxix._

Lorelai had to hand it to the Huntzbergers -- not even she could have served food and alcohol before a wedding and avoided looking a little bit trashy. Somehow, in the mess and confusion of relations and early comers, the air of impeccable and untouchable money hung heavy. God, what she wouldn't do for a little bit of the class that a few million dollars managed to bring .

She'd probably wear more rhinestone shirts, just because she could get away with it. The thought almost brought a smile to her face.

"Hi," a little girl said (and Lorelai with shock amended her assessment; it a young girl, not a little girl, and when had she become old?). She stuck out her hand. "Groom. You?"

"Bride."

"Ah, another of the Gilmores' gaggle of family and friends whom the bride doesn't seem to know."

Lorelai made an act of laughing, and many people bought it. The girl offered to her what Luke had not been able to offer earlier -- a distraction. If she pretended here that everything was okay, then it would be practice for later in the day.

"I haven't seen most of these people outside of a function since I was fifteen," she said, casting her eyes about the room as if searching for a familiar face. "I'm not even sure if I'm seeing my family or yours. I could just be recalling some guest at a dinner party that my mother hosted. Across the room, it's hard to see a resemblance to Great-aunt Agnes."

"Tell me about it," and the girl sighed. "I've been regulated to a boarding school for most of three years. The only people I'm certain that I'm related to are the ones that really scare me. Even then, I pretend like I don't see them when they motion."

"I've got an aunt like that. She's a hugger whose aura lingers long after the embrace has ended."

"Sadly enough, I know exactly whom you're speaking of. She cornered me in the kitchen, pinched my cheeks, and told me that I made a stunning bride."

"See, now, if she hadn't been drunk, it could have been any number of people. But it's two in the afternoon, so of course it was Aunt Totsy."

"By the way, my name's Imp."

"Imp?"

"It's short for Impatience. My brother thinks he's a lot wittier than he really is. Classic case of a childhood nickname gone bad."

This had to be the other sister mentioned in the wedding announcement. For someone named Patience, she looked surprisingly normal. Lorelai suspected any real trauma was probably buried deep in her subconscious, and there _had_ to be trauma. Growing up a Huntzberger sounded vicious from what little she had garnered from the last year's conversations with Rory.

"Aren't you, like, twelve?"

"Fifteen, but it's almost the same, isn't it?"

The tall blonde woman who had been standing next to Mr. and Mrs. Huntzberger staggered past them then, nodding at the girl Patience with an larger-than-life wink. Lorelai placed a name to a face: Honor.

"I'm sorry if this is a little rude, but is your sister drunk?"

The girl gave a rather scathing look as preface to her reply. Lorelai admired it for reasons that would not have disappointed Emily Gilmore.

"She thinks my brother stole the wind out of her sails by marrying," she explained. "She was engaged in May, and her wedding's schedule for this coming June. Now, because Logan's got it in his head to go study Latin in Rome or something, he just _has_ to get married. Plus, the girl makes my parents just _hop_."

"I thought it was international business," Lorelai said, ignoring the comment about Rory.

"Close enough," said Patience, grabbing a drink off of a tray as it passed her. She raised her brows at Lorelai. "Do you mind? Living through it is enough to make me wish for class A drugs. Retelling the family plotlines _are_ enough to drive one to drink. And it is a wedding."

"Go ahead," Lorelai said. "But you're going to need a lot more to forget your genetic pool."

Patience laughed. "I keep praying that I'm gay, just for the fun. Sadly, I drive stick."

"God bless you for trying."

Honor returned then, making an exaggerated come-hither motion with her hand about two yards past Patience's back. Lorelai watched her for several minutes, mildly interested to see if she would continue standing there, even after it was apparent that Patience hadn't seen her.

She did.

"I think you're being paged," Lorelai said.

The girl looked over and sighed. "Honor wants me ,which means that Mom's got a bone to pick." She handed Lorelai her glass. "I never did catch your name."

Impishly, Lorelai replied, "Mrs. Danes."

The girl disappeared in the mulling crowd, and Lorelai, dumping the drink on the tray of a passing server, made her way over to a table out of the way so that she could catch her breath and perhaps watch the people as they scurried about. Being part of the rush was not in her plan.

"Hey."

Lorelai looked up and saw, to her great surprise, Christopher. He was dressed impeccably, but she saw fatigue around his eyes and in the way his hair needed more than a comb run through it; he needed the entire Nivea for Men product line.

"You're here," she said.

Christopher was all apologies and hands as he sat down next to her, eyes filled with an emotion that she couldn't quite place (was too tired herself to place).

"I didn't think I was going to make it," he said ruefully. "Gigi and I were in New Zealand until ten this morning."

"I heard. You had business there?"

"Cousins, actually. My mother is thinking of moving there to be closer to her sister."

The way he said it and the queer, contorted look of his face, as if he were holding something back, tipped Lorelai off. At first, she wasn't certain as to what she knew, but then -- then she realized.

"You're thinking of going also."

Christopher seemed to be searching for an excuse in his answer (wherefore, Lorelai knew not).

"I want Gigi to know her grandmother," he said. "Sherry's parents are dead, and it isn't as if she isn't already in another country. It's just as easy to fly to New Zealand as it is to fly to Connecticut."

The comment lay heavy in the air for several moments. Lorelai knew that he had thought about it, could see the anxiety in his shoulders and the hands clenched in his lap. He didn't want to leave Rory, but he wanted to do best by Gigi.

"Unless," Lorelaid said, "she's watched Lost and is therefore terrified of going anywhere _near_ Sydney International. But if that's the case, Gigi's much better off without her flighty mother."

Christopher caught on to her mood. Hell, Lorelai thought that it was highly probably that he taught her the tactic. Chris had always been one to avoid his feelings, even more so than Emily had taught to Lorelai.

"You watch Lost, don't you?"

"I'm just saying -- don't expect a lot of visits. New Zealand had better have e-mail."

"Think they might have put it in last month."

"Just in time."

Lorelai reflected in the silence following that it was really too bad that at least one of them wasn't cheerful. It had always been that if one were down, the other could always bring them up. Smiles between them were short and force today, and Lorelai suspected that it had as much to do with whatever was happening in their lives outside of the church as within.

"So ... Rory."

This was the elephant that they had been stepping around all throughout their conversation.

"Yeah," Lorelai said. "Rory. Boy. Married."

"She looks good."

"I haven't seen her."

Chris echoed her earlier words with a strange look on his face.

"I heard."

Lorelai looked down at her gloves and thought of the wedding party and its last minute preparations going about somewhere in a back room of the church. Maybe she should have stopped by and said something to her daughter -- and maybe her daughter should have sought her out as well.

"She doesn't want to talk to me, Chris."

"That's not what she said," he told her. "She's sitting in her room, surrounded by a dozen or more shrieking girls who scare the devil out of me, and she looks forlorn."

"Forlorn? Christopher, did you get a dictionary for your birthday?"

"Maybe it's that I've been spending more time with Rory. She's rubbed off on me. The girl has some good qualities."

Lorelai sighed. "I know. She's great, and she's wonderful, and she's getting married _today_. It's so strange just sitting here and thinking about that. But, Chris, she didn't call me; she didn't write to my. My mother wrote to me about the wedding. I'm going to respect that."

"I think you're making a mistake."

Lorelai couldn't answer.


	10. Chapter 10

**chapter ten**

_xxx._

Lorelai managed to find a room away for herself -- no young girls were in it, no exes, and certainly no Rory Gilmores to haunt her conversations. Her peace was short lived however; Lorelai had no more than settled into the

"Lorelai," said Emily, surprised.

She sighed. Lorelai was no mood to snub her mother this morning, not after all that had gone on the past few days, and certainly not at her daughter's wedding. She would be civil, Emily would get the picture, and after the wedding they could go back to not talking.

"Mom."

Emily took this as a bridge mended in their relationship.

"A Sunday wedding," her mother said. "Isn't it beautiful, Lorelai?"

Lorelai sighed, but she couldn't ignore her mother speaking to her at her own daughter's wedding.

"Yeah," she said. Lorelai raised her eyes and let her gaze travel along the extravagance of the room. "It's gorgeous."

"She looks so lovely in that white dress. She wanted something in cream -- she said it went with her complexion better -- but I told her that she was marrying in white, and that was it. She capitulated." Emily's smug smile was in place, and Lorelai felt memories of other times it had been worn come washing over her. The look changed swiftly as Emily swept her eyes over Lorelai's face. "You look ill. Is it the baby?"

"Excuse me?"

"Luke told me," her mother said, throwing what could not be classified as an apologetic look over her shoulder at Luke. "He phoned Tuesday morning and told me. I'm not sure whether I should have said anything, but you don't look well."

Luke managed to find the shoes on his feet very absorbing. Lorelai would deal with him later, and he knew that, but for now, the real battle was between Lorelai and her mother. Luke knew that also.

"Mom, just --" _Just stop talking. Just rewind the past year. Just give me quiet for now_. "It's the baby. Can we forget it, now? I don't want to talk about it."

She and Luke shared a look. In it, there were many things spoken, but the strongest was silence. Lorelai missed something in the heat of the moment though. It had been the wrong time for that look. She had pushed away her mother, had made her angry. She had Luke, her actions said, and Emily had been forced back.

Before, there was concern. Now, there was a defensive wall. Emily Gilmore on the defensive said mean, hurtful things (and sighed a disconcerting lot)

"I can't believe you did it again."

Lorelai whipped her head to face her mother. Luke's hand on her shoulder tightened subtly.

"What do you mean, you can't believe I did it again?"

"I mean what I say, Lorelai, and I always have," Emily said. "I can't believe that you are pregnant again. Was this planned?"

"Nothing was planned, Mom. It was life. Everything. Everything happens."

"Mm," said Emily, lips pursed. "And when everything is happening, you never do think about the family, do you? Not once. It's very inconsiderate of you. Is this why you and Luke were married so hurriedly? Were you pregnant?"

"Emily --" started Luke, but Lorelai cut him off sharply.

"Do I _look_ six months pregnant, Mom?"

"Luke told me last week that you were nine weeks along." A concession, then, from her mother. Lorelai should have accepted it.

"Well, there you go. You shouldn't go screaming at me when you know that you're wrong."

"Wrong? Oh, Lorelai, I am so far from wrong that I'm in Stars Hollow!"

"What is that supposed to even mean?"

"It means that you think that running away to Stars Hollow solves everything. Well, Lorelai, it doesn't. It doesn't solve a three-year-old daughter, and it doesn't solve the talk. Not ever does it solve the talk!"

"Rory's twenty-one! I'm sure the talk is dying down finally."

Speak of the Devil, and he appears. Rory entered the room then like a sprit; alone, so Logan must still have been preparing. Lorelai found it rather ironic that the bride was ready before the groom, but she suspected that Rory had been there much, much longer than Logan.

Why she was wandering the empty reception rooms instead of being attended to by a dozen chattering women, Lorelai wasn't certain, but she imagined that Rory had asked to be by herself for a while before the ceremony.

Luke had seen Rory enter as well, but Emily's back was to the door, and she had not yet realized that her granddaughter had entered.

"A few springs back, my cousin's niece had her first child two years after she was married," Emily stated with a sour look on her face. "Two years, Lorelai, and people still made comments. They compared her to _you_. I don't want that again."

If Lorelai had been listening closer, she would have realized that there was fear and panic in her mother's voice. Emily Gilmore did not want people to assume that Lorelai had gotten pregnant out of wedlock once more and this time -- _this time!_ -- had decided to marry the father. She did not want Lorelai to go through that, because, as her daughter would later realize, she loved her.

Lorelai heard only the accusation.

"Oh, for God's sake, Mom, I'm not pregnant anymore! Happy?"

Rory inhaled sharply at this, but Lorelai kept her gaze on her mother. Emily turned her head to Rory at that moment, but Lorelai's statement had been too much for her to ignore.

"What do you mean, you're not pregnant anymore?" asked Emily. "One doesn't just stop being pregnant -- not unless one has gone through nine months of pregnancy. You were nowhere near are nine months pregnant. You didn't go and get an abortion, did you, Lorelai? What will the Ella Skomarovsky say when she learns? That woman _is_ insufferable, and I hope you realize the sort of predicament I've been put into if word gets out that you terminated."

Luke stepped forward. "Emily, you're out of line here."

"Mom, _shut up_." Lorelai's voice rose several octaves. The others in the room turned to look at her. "I didn't terminate the pregnancy, okay? I lost the baby. It was a miscarriage."

The angry lines drawn up around Emily's eyes fell like petals off a rose. Lorelai missed her mother then in a way that she hadn't missed her in years. It occurred to her: _She misses me too_. Maybe even her mother had been sad, beyond any logic and reason. Suddenly, it wasn't enough to have Luke; she wanted her family whole again.

"Oh, Lorelai."

And Lorelai remembered what it was like to be held by her mother on the front seat of her father's new car. She felt young and confused.

"It's all right, Mom." She crossed the room and stood near her mother. The proximity was intimate, and Lorelai wanted to comfort her mother now more than she had ever wanted to, more than she had ever needed to. Emily Gilmore did not deserve her as a daughter. "The doctor said -- he said it was a chromosomal abnormality."

"What does that mean?"

"It was -- it was just an accident." Lorelai looked down, embarrassed and ashamed. "It was my accident."

"No," Luke said, and he was standing there next to her, and Lorelai felt the heat of both her mother and husband bringing her to life and away from the terrible numbness that had engulfed her since Thursday. "It means that something went wrong _before _you got pregnant; it could have been me, it could have been you. It doesn't matter, Lorelai."

"Maybe I'm too old for another baby," Lorelai said softly. "Maybe that's what it means."

"Oh, for God's sake, Lorelai," interjected her mother, "you have Gilmore genes. Your Aunt Mathilda had her first child at almost forty-three years old, and do you think any of them are any less the better for it? Granted, your cousin Beatrice is a little slow, but with a mother like Tildy, who wouldn't be?"

Lorelai let out a short burst of laughter. With her mother's strange comfort and her own acceptance of it, the small circle which they had made disbanded, and Lorelai was left standing next to Luke while her mother moved a few steps back. Still together but separated. Ties of their own curious brand of love and respect bound the three of them.

"How old is Beatrice?" she asked, dipping her head into Luke's shoulder.

"Fifteen this August, and she's got the most hideous hair-do."

There was nothing to say after that, but the short silence was comfortable enough. What broke it was most surprising.

"Grandma?" Rory spoke for the first time since entering the room. "Can I ... can I be alone with Mom?"

Luke instinctively stepped back and relinquished Lorelai to her daughter, but Emily turned to Rory and raised a sculptured brow.

"Are you okay?" she asked, and Lorelai heard the real question behind that. _Will you be okay_? Her mother and her daughter had grown so close these past six months -- closer than Lorelai had ever thought she'd be with her mother, and much more close than she and Rory had been during that same time period.

What a bittersweet thing to know.

"Yeah, Grandma. I'm fine. I just -- " and Rory looked around the room as if searching for the words. Lorelai followed her gaze, hoping for some insight into what it was she was looking for. Just as she had in the past year, she came up clueless as to what was going on in her daughter's head. "I want to talk to Mom alone."

A deafening din made them all startle then, and Emily craned her head so that she could peer out the window. She sighed; it was beginning to rain.

"I told you the thirteenth, but you would be superstitious," she said sadly.

Luke leading the way, the two filed out of the room and left those with true Gilmore blood alone in it. Lorelai cast an appraising look upon her daughter. Emily had been right, of course. Rory looked spectacular in the dress that she was wearing. She was reminded very suddenly of when her daughter had been quite young and had insisted upon wearing only white. It seemed so long ago now that she'd scrubbed the stains out of little tops and dresses.

And she was getting married that day. Even now, with only twenty after before the ceremony, Lorelai could barely believe that her baby girl was not only marrying someone but was leaving the country in two months' time. When had the tiny literati grown into this graceful woman standing before her?

There were no words and speeches to be said for this moment; there was only truth, and the truth was that Lorelai loved her daughter fiercely, no matter where she went in life, physically, spiritually, and emotionally.

Rory had made the first move by seeking her out. Lorelai made the second.

"Hey."

"Mom." And Rory wasn't facing her, but she lent out a hand to be held. For the first time in six months, Lorelai clasped her daughter's hand in her own and wondered if anything in the world felt more right. Rory drew in a slow, ragged breath. "Mommy, I'm pregnant."

"Well," Lorelai said, and she thought, _maybe they should have gone with off-white._

_finis_


End file.
